A day's work as a senior leader in schools must be the most intense work experience outside of the armed forces/emergency services.

Teachers too. The added complication of slt is how one event can happen that is then your whole day gone, unplanned, with no extra time to catch up the stuff you should have got done.

Yeah no shade on non-slt teachers. That's intense enough. And also with slt, the need to sort dozens of little things minute to minute as you go, each one mattering a lot to whoever needs it.

There is good data to support this: www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/asset...

Not surprising but powerful seeing it in black and white

Right. I found this study when I was looking for data about something else but then saw the teacher numbers! Hard to imagine things have got better since 2017 either

I was just going to make the same point: would love to see hard data, but can only imagine the trend for teachers will have been upwards, especially since Covid.

Totally. When I started my career it was pretty common for teachers to strategically plan an easier lesson by setting some sort of extended task involving research and then perhaps a group presentation. Could take up the whole lesson. You just had to keep an eye on things. Not any more.

Ha I remember doing that for my back-to-back Fridays

Right. When I first went to Ark Soane I was completely convinced but major concern was “how are we going to get teachers who are 60 doing this for 5 hours a day?”

And tbh I’m not sure I’ve got an answer to that!

I’ve had absolutely the same thought. I think it’s brilliant but I do question how scaleable.