Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to reduce teachers' (a) paperwork and (b) administrative tasks.

Our priority is to make sure that teaching remains an attractive and fulfilling profession. Reducing workload is key to that objective. The Government is committed to working with the teaching profession to strip away workload that does not add value or give teachers the time and space to focus on teaching. The Government has announced a period of stability for assessment, qualifications and the curriculum and plans to move to a simpler accountability system.

Following the 2014 Workload Challenge, the Department established three independent review groups to address the three main causes of unnecessary workload: marking, planning and resources, and data management. Their reports set out principles to address these issues. The Department has accepted and is acting on all the recommendations and is working with Ofsted and others to embed the principles of the reports in schools. There is still more to do to tackle the complex drivers of excessive workload. The Department has established a new workload advisory group to assess levels of unnecessary data collection.