Paperwork pushes teachers to breaking point

Pointless evaluations

Cui Shifeng, principal of Hefei Hupo Mingcheng Primary School in Anhui province, said that while the education authorities have called for a reduction of the academic burden on students, teachers' workloads have increased greatly in recent years.

The endless paperwork indicates that authorities have still not found better ways to evaluate teachers, and need the paperwork as a formal way of assessing performance, he said.

Teachers have been singing the paperwork blues for years, but the problem has become unbearable, mostly because both the central and local governments require them to track students' progress and make schools more accountable, Cui said.

In recent decades, schools have become obsessed with accountability, according to Cui.

He added that there is nothing wrong with teachers being held to account, but noted that they always have been held to account because if they're not at the top of their game the students will behave poorly or parents will be knocking down the staffroom door.

Accountability is not the issue, he said. Instead, the problem lies with the education authorities, school leaders and education experts who want to be able to measure education outcomes so they can point the finger or comment about the teachers' work.

This has resulted in teachers filling out endless forms and making endless notes, instead of doing the job they are employed to do - bringing out the best in their students, he added.

"We've replaced the building of good student-teacher relationships with data collection. Data won't help children with low self-esteem feel better about themselves, but a responsible teacher who has the time to build strong relationships with them might," he said.

Easing the burden

The paperwork problem has become so acute that earlier this year the Ministry of Education said that it would adopt policies to free primary and middle school teachers from unnecessary administrative work.

In addition to classroom instruction and research, many teachers spend a lot of time filling out forms, participating in competitions and handling school evaluations, all of which leaves them exhausted, said Chen Baosheng, minister of education, at the 2019 National Education Work Conference in Beijing.

He added that one of the ministry's priorities this year is to reduce the administrative burden and give teachers time to improve their skills.

The ministry will introduce policies to reduce the administrative workloads of primary and middle school teachers, and it will conduct a thorough assessment of the tasks they are required to do. Unnecessary work will be eliminated, according to Chen.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, said teachers should focus on teaching and research, and not spend their time handling inspections, filling out forms or helping schools win useless awards.

Many schools still require their teachers to submit handwritten lesson plans so the school leaders or education authorities can assess them, yet many teachers do not actually follow the plans when they teach and it has become a waste of time, he added.

"We have to distinguish between writing lesson plans and planning learning. Teachers are fed up with pointless work and writing lesson plans that run to many pages. Even if teaching plans are helpful for new teachers, there is no reason why they should not be digital, which would save a lot of time," he said.

Schools should adopt digital management platforms and share basic information across different levels so teachers can avoid repetitive work, he said.

He added that schools should ask teachers to identify the paperwork they consider essential for teaching, the reasons paperwork has been requested, the paperwork that will improve the management of the school, and the paperwork they consider unnecessary and of little benefit to the school or the students.

"The complex demands of teachers' workloads have the potential to negatively affect the quality of teaching and learning. This is a worrying trend for the future of the education system and for the country," he said.