How GoLearn Reduces Teacher Workload

We’re currently in a teaching crisis which has ranked teacher workload as one of the main reasons for teachers leaving the profession and the development of health issues in school staff.

The whole of our education system has a role to play in minimising the unnecessary tasks that take educators and school leaders away from improving outcomes for children and taking care of their own wellbeing.

As eLearning and EdTech platforms become more prominent and popular in schools; we also have a role to play in reducing unnecessary burdens placed on teachers.

It’s widely reported that adopting new technologies in your school can streamline previously manual and arduous processes which can help to reduce teacher workload and save an inordinate amount of time. 

We’ve streamlined the capabilities of our platform with information provided by the DfE as well as our own experiences working with schools globally to build out the elements of our technology that reduce teacher workload.

In this article, we’ll take you through the four critical areas of GoLearn’s literacy and learning resources that help teachers reduce their workload and subsequently fight back against the teaching crisis. 

1 – Data, Marking & Feedback

“56% of respondents to the DfE Workload Challenge survey said data management causes unnecessary workload.”

Data management is one of the most prominent strains on teacher workload. Often, the data teachers track and input are duplicative and unnecessary, adding little or no value to students’ progression. 

A similar problem occurs when providing your students with feedback and marking. Many schools fall into the trap of over-marking student work without analysing the effectiveness of their feedback and its use in furthering student learning.

To reduce the impact data management, marking and feedback has on workload, the amount of information, its value, and how it is collected and distributed needs to be assessed.

The Issue

The reasons why data management, marking and feedback become a burden rather than a benefit.

1. When the purpose of collecting data has not been clearly identified
2. When the process of collecting data is inefficient
3. Unnecessary data is collected and collated, wasting time
4. Using only written feedback as opposed to different methods
5. No tools to enhance or streamline the marking process, marking will take longer

GoLearn’s Resource

The above points highlight the opportunity for instant data, feedback and marking to have a profound and positive impact. It can help teachers to teach and school leaders to focus on the right issues. 

• GoLearn’s platform collects a wide variety of data from each interaction with the student – tracking strengths, weaknesses and gaps in learning
• Our platform instantly supplies the teacher with deep data insights so they can track and plan interventions for individual students in their classroom
• All classes and assessments are instantly marked, providing clear feedback for the student

This element not only encourages deep learning but reduces teacher workload allowing time to be better spent in the classroom, engaging with students as a class or on a one-to-one basis.

2 – Curriculum & Lesson Planning

Preparing curriculum plans and analysing their effectiveness helps schools to develop their teaching materials, but it takes up a mammoth amount of the teachers time in the process. By making planning faster and more efficient, teacher workload can be significantly reduced.

The Issue 

1. Overplanning increases teacher workload without necessarily improving lesson quality.
2. Teachers often plan outside of working hours at home as well as days off and even holidays.
3. Finding high-quality resources is time-consuming, and teachers are creating their own resources as they don’t have access to the materials they need.

GoLearn’s Resource 

GoLearn supplies teachers with access to the following lesson and curriculum resources that will save valuable teacher time, improve student outcomes and give them confidence knowing they are using high-quality materials. 

• Access to fully mapped Schemes of Work which are aligned with the national curriculum
• Each SOW houses engaging lesson content to encourage different learning styles 
• All content is designed and developed in the UK by leading literacy and language experts to encourage attendance, engagement and achievement
• Artificial Intelligence differentiates lesson content for all abilities, allowing for greater inclusivity and scaffolding to increase outcomes 
• Our platform uses the initial assessment data to create Customised Learning Plans for each student
• Each subsequent lesson houses formative assessments which inform the next to personalise learning for the individual

3 – Communication 

Schools rely on communication in all its forms to help teachers keep up to date, make sure parents are always informed, and students have all the information they need to learn as effectively as possible.

The Issue

• With 24/7 access to emails, teachers’ workloads have suffered. Constant access to communication can be damaging to teachers’ mental health.
• Parents often find it hard to communicate with teachers or find the information they are looking for. This means more time is wasted arranging meetings or speaking over the phone with parents.

GoLearn’s Resource 

By providing detailed data insights in the form of exportable reports, GoLearn’s platform can aid teachers to communicate with students, parents and school leaders instantly to save them time.

• With live reports available within minutes, teachers know where their learners are – promptly, quickly, and regularly. Teachers and senior school leaders can identify students’ skills and their place in the curriculum.
• You can filter the reports in your school by teachers’ classes, students’ gender, grades, test types, etc. to instantly provide you with the information you need to communicate in real-time.
• Our platform also provides a dashboard for parents so that they can see the progress of their children and parent/child engagement support, making them active partners in the learning journey of their child and reducing the amount of communication needed by the teacher.
• We also provide the facility to produce multi-year progress reports to allow schools to ensure that students are making steady progress from one academic year to the next.

4 – Behaviour 

Managing student behaviour in school is one of the most difficult and challenging parts of a teacher’s job. Not only does it require skill, patience and experience, but the implications of not managing behaviour can be detrimental to the pupil’s outcomes.

The Issue 

Behavioural issues stem from a lack of motivation, the desire for attention, the stress from feeling left behind compared to the rest of the class or indeed being bored because the level of learning is not challenging enough. 

1. Contacting parents/carers regarding poor behaviour requires additional work
2. Behaviour action risk reduction and incident tracking/liaising with third parties can be a time drain
3. Behaviour disruptions in class can detract from learning time 

GoLearn’s Resource 

We address these challenges faced by teachers through our customised learning plans which provide you with differentiated lessons for all abilities as well as giving pupils and teachers the feedback they need to inform their learning journey and behavioural interventions.

• Clearly presented data from embedded assessments highlights to both teachers and students the areas in teaching and learning which can yield realistic and achievable positive outcomes in learning and behaviour.
• Pupils who use GoLearn have better attendance and engagement in class due to having clearly defined targets to work towards and are shown their improvement as they progress through their learning.
• Customised learning plans and differentiated lessons for all abilities give pupils and teachers the feedback they need to inform their learning journey at each step and can quickly address and communicate any behavioural issues.
• Teachers who use GoLearn see a marked increase in praise points, a reduction in negative sanctions and calls home for their pupils.

The GoLearn platform is built to ensure that only necessary data is collected and that the power of data is given its proper place helping teachers make professional judgements, improve student outcomes and, in doing so, reduce teacher workload.

If you’d like to find out more about how GoLearn can reduce your teacher workload and improve the learning outcomes of your students – click the button below to book a demo with a member of our team.