How to Reduce Teacher Workload: 12 Practical Strategies for UK Primary Schools

Reducing teacher workload has been a DfE priority for nearly a decade. Here are 12 practical strategies that actually work in UK primary schools — from reviewing your marking policy to introducing AI tools safely.

Why teacher workload is at crisis point

Reducing teacher workload is not a new ambition — it has been a stated priority for the Department for Education since 2016. Yet the problem has got worse, not better. The DfE's 2023 Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders survey found that teachers in England work an average of 49 hours per week — with secondary teachers often exceeding 55. Primary teachers, despite smaller class sizes in many cases, face a particular combination of pressures: marking, planning, reports, parent communication, and an increasing administrative burden from school compliance and communications.

The consequences are serious. The same survey found that workload is the single most-cited reason teachers consider leaving the profession. For school leaders trying to recruit and retain good teachers, that makes workload reduction not a nice-to-have — it is a strategic necessity.

The DfE Workload Reduction Toolkit explained

In 2018 the DfE published its Workload Reduction Toolkit — a practical set of resources for school leaders to audit and address workload in their schools. It covers three key areas identified as the biggest drivers of unnecessary workload: marking, planning and preparation, and data management.

The toolkit is genuinely useful, but it requires a leader to dedicate time to running it — which is itself a workload challenge. The most effective schools use the toolkit as a framework for structured conversations rather than a form-filling exercise. The goal is to identify which tasks are consuming the most time, which of those are genuinely necessary, and which can be reduced, simplified or eliminated.

If you haven't run a workload audit recently, the toolkit is the right place to start. Our companion post — The Teacher Workload Reduction Toolkit: A Complete Walkthrough — takes you through it section by section.

Marking and feedback: where the hours go

Marking is consistently identified as one of the biggest contributors to teacher workload. The DfE's own research found that detailed written marking of every piece of work is not the most effective form of feedback — yet many schools still expect it, either through policy or through cultural pressure.

Practical strategies that reduce marking time without reducing quality:

• Live marking — brief verbal feedback during lessons rather than written comments after. Research by the Education Endowment Foundation suggests this is at least as effective as written feedback for most pupils.
• Self and peer assessment — structured approaches where pupils review their own or each other's work against clear criteria. Builds metacognition and reduces teacher marking volume.
• Whole-class feedback sheets — instead of individual written comments, teachers write one shared feedback document noting common strengths and areas for improvement. Takes 10 minutes instead of an hour.
• AI comment banks — tools like Teachmate generate banks of feedback comments that teachers adapt and personalise. Reduces blank-page time significantly without reducing the quality of individual feedback.

Planning smarter, not longer

Lesson planning is the other major time sink. The expectation of detailed written plans for every lesson is a legacy of Ofsted requirements that no longer exist — Ofsted stopped requiring or evaluating lesson plan formats in 2014. Yet many teachers still write detailed plans from habit or internal expectation.

What actually helps:

• Collaborative planning within year groups — sharing the load rather than every teacher planning independently
• Using existing high-quality resources — Oak National Academy offers thousands of free, curriculum-aligned lesson resources that can be used or adapted rather than created from scratch
• AI-assisted planning frameworks — tools like Oak's Aila generate structured lesson plans in seconds that teachers then contextualise for their class
• Planning once, teaching twice — building a bank of reusable plans and resources rather than recreating everything each year

How AI tools cut admin hours

The most significant contribution AI tools make to reducing teacher workload is in administrative tasks — the things that consume teacher time outside the classroom. These include:

• Writing and editing school newsletters and parent communications
• Drafting letters home for individual situations
• Writing and updating school policies
• Producing report comment banks and end-of-year reports
• Creating resources, worksheets and presentation slides
• Summarising meeting notes and producing action logs

Schools that have adopted AI tools for these tasks typically report saving 2–5 hours per teacher per week. For a school with 15 teaching staff, that's 30–75 staff hours per week returned to teaching, planning and pupil support.

The key is doing this safely. At AskColin, every school we work with gets a full AI compliance document set — including an AI policy, staff training guide and acceptable use agreement — so staff can use tools confidently without data protection risks.

What SLT can do this term

If you're a headteacher or member of the senior leadership team, here are the highest-impact actions you can take this term to reduce workload across your school:

1. Run a workload audit. Use the DfE toolkit to identify your top three workload pressure points. Don't try to fix everything at once.
2. Review your marking policy. Does it require detailed written comments on every piece of work? If so, consider whether that's necessary — the evidence suggests it isn't.
3. Introduce a shared resource bank. One central location where planning, resources and templates are shared across the team — reducing duplication.
4. Adopt one AI tool. Start with one approved tool for one task. Newsletters are often the easiest win. See what time it saves before expanding.
5. Get your AI governance in order. If staff are already using AI tools, make sure you have a policy in place. Our AI compliance document set gives you everything you need.

Quick wins you can start tomorrow

Not everything requires a policy review or a strategic plan. Here are things individual teachers and admin staff can do tomorrow to start reducing workload:

• Use an AI tool to draft this week's newsletter — review and personalise, don't write from scratch
• Try whole-class feedback for your next marking session instead of individual written comments
• Check whether Oak National Academy has a lesson resource for your next topic before planning from scratch
• Set up a shared folder for your year group's planning so colleagues can access and reuse each other's work
• Use an AI tool to draft the next standard letter home — it should take two minutes not twenty