Key takeaways
- Teacher workload is capped in England at 1,265 hours of directed time a year under the STPCD; Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland set their own limits.
- The Department for Education named three fixes in 2016: a marking policy that asks for less written comment, fewer data drops, and planning shared across a department instead of duplicated by every teacher.
- A 2026 global survey behind the Teacher Wellbeing Report found close to two in three teachers still working nearly an extra day a week.
- None of the government or union guidance treats the timetable itself as a lever; workload shows up early only when the hour cap lives in the plan the timetable is generated from.
What is teacher workload, and what drives it up?
Teacher workload is every hour a school directs a teacher to work in a year: timetabled teaching, plus the planning, marking, meetings, and administration around it. The Education Endowment Foundation's workload review and the teaching press point to the same three drivers repeatedly: a marking policy that asks for more written comment than it needs to, data collection repeated more often than leaders act on it, and lesson planning rebuilt from scratch by every teacher instead of shared across a department.
The scale is not a UK-only story. A global survey behind the 2026 Teacher Wellbeing Report, reported by Tes, found close to two in three teachers still working nearly an extra day a week, and more than one in three logging over nine extra hours. The drivers are documented; where schools differ is which one they fix first, and in what order.
Is there a legal limit on teacher working hours?
In England, teachers on the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document work under a contractual cap: 1,265 hours of directed time a year, the limit the NEU and NASUWT both hold schools to. Directed time covers timetabled teaching, registration, staff meetings, parents' evenings, and INSET days, everything except the statutory lunch break, and anything beyond the cap needs a separate paid agreement. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland set their own limits under different contracts, so the 1,265 figure does not travel across the UK unchanged. The cap bounds the hours; filling them well is the harder problem, and that is what the levers below are for.
What actually reduces teacher workload?
The Department for Education ran three review groups on workload in 2016 and published a fix from each. The Education Endowment Foundation's later evidence review added a qualifier: which feedback methods earn their time and which do not. None of the four treats the timetable itself as a lever, which is where the last row below differs from the rest.
| Lever | What changes | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Marking policy | Less written comment-by-comment feedback; more verbal, whole-class, and peer feedback for the same teaching point | DfE Marking Policy Review Group, 2016; EEF's feedback review found the medium matters less than the volume and timing |
| Data collection | Fewer data drops, and only as often as leaders actually act on what they show | DfE Data Management Review Group, 2016 |
| Shared planning | Departments plan lessons and resources together instead of every teacher rebuilding the same material alone | DfE Planning and Resources Group, 2016; EEF's workload review names protected planning time among the most reported reductions |
| Hour caps inside the timetable plan | A weekly and yearly hour limit sits on the teacher's record in the same plan the timetable is generated from, so an overload shows before the timetable is built, not after it is published | Smootables: the weekly limit is a hard constraint the solver enforces before it produces a timetable |
How does timetable planning catch overload before it happens?
The three DfE levers above change what teachers are asked to do. This one changes when a school finds out it asked for too much.
- Set each teacher's weekly and yearly hour limit once, next to their contract hours and teaching eligibility.
- Allocate courses and hours in the year plan while the workload view shows hours against those limits, department by department.
- Read the over-limit flag before generation: a teacher over their weekly cap shows in the workload panel while courses can still move.
- Generate the timetable. The weekly hour limit is a hard constraint, so a timetable that would push a teacher over it is not produced.
- Record absences and unavailability as dated plan data on the teacher's record; the solver respects it in the next generation, and any hand edit to cover a gap goes through the same conflict-checked editor as any other change.
Where to read the deeper mechanics
The pages below cover what a single page cannot: the contract math, the part-time edge cases, and how fairness gets optimized rather than promised.
Contract hours and the contact ratio
How a contractual cap and protected non-teaching time become the baseline the timetable is checked against. See teacher contract hours.
Catching overload before placement
The check that compares assigned load against the cap while rebalancing still costs an edit, not a rebuild.
Part-time teachers and fixed days off
Pro-rated caps and the feasibility check that catches an impossible pattern before the solver does. See timetabling part-time teachers.
Fair distribution, not just legal compliance
What to balance once every hour cap is met, and why fairness is optimized rather than guaranteed. See fair distribution of workload.
Team teaching and shared classes
What happens to load numbers when two teachers share one lesson, modeled explicitly instead of guessed. See team teaching and workload accounting.
Questions about workload planning
What counts as directed time?
Timetabled teaching, registration, staff meetings, parents' evenings, and INSET days, everything a teacher is required to be at work and available for work, except the statutory lunch break.
Is the 1,265-hour limit the same across the UK?
No. It applies to teachers on the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document in England. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland set their own working-time arrangements under separate contracts, so a school group spanning UK nations needs a limit per nation, not one figure applied everywhere.
Does cutting marking volume actually reduce total workload?
Only if nothing else absorbs the time. The EEF's review found the feedback medium, written, verbal, or whole-class, matters less than how much of it a policy demands; a school that stops asking for written comments but keeps every other check in place has moved the hours, not cut them.
How are absences and cover handled today?
Recorded absences and unavailability, one-off or repeating, live on the teacher's record as dated plan data, and the solver respects them in the next generation. Substitute planning connected to the live master timetable is on the roadmap; schools cover that gap today by exporting the affected view and editing it directly.
Does Smootables replace our payroll system?
No. Smootables is a planning and timetabling workspace, not a payroll or record system. It can import and export data (Excel, CSV, and ICS calendar files) when schools need to move workload information between tools.
Can teachers see their own timetable and hours?
Yes. A published calendar feed keeps a teacher's own calendar in sync with their timetable today, even though a dedicated in-app view with comments is still on the roadmap. The feed alone gives every teacher a timetable that updates as the plan changes.