Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to reduce teacher workload and reduce teachers' weekly working hours.

We are continuing our extensive work with the profession to help remove unnecessary workload for teachers. On 26 March 2016, we published reports from three independent review groups to address the biggest concerns that teachers have raised as burdensome - marking, planning and resources and data management. We accepted, and are acting on, all the recommendations for Government.

We published, in March 2015, the Department for Education Protocol giving schools more time to prepare for significant changes to accountability, the curriculum and qualifications. We are reviewing its impact and are committed to ensuring sufficient time is given for schools to plan for significant changes. We have also conducted the first biennial Teacher Workload Survey and the report is due to be published later this year. Results from this survey, and those in future years, will help us track teacher workload and working hours so that further action can be taken if needed.

Removing unnecessary workload is complex and change will take time. We are continuing to work with teachers to make sure they have the ongoing support they need, including by publishing case studies on our teaching blog, written by serving teachers, and showing what’s working well in their schools to reduce unnecessary workload.