Workload survey at Gymnasium Celeanum

It is not only at the Celeanum that teachers experience a lot of work pressure. This is common at many schools. ‘They have to keep many balls in the air and often set the bar high,’ says Dost. ‘As a school management, you need to know what your employees are up against. We held many individual interviews, but how was the workload perceived by the entire organisation? You need that information to come up with an effective solution.’

Dost had DUO-Onderwijs do an objective measurement. ‘Thanks to the large benchmark, we were able to put our results alongside those of similar schools,’ Dost explains. ‘This showed that our teachers experience more pressure than at other schools. Despite good working conditions, such as a high raise factor.’ Although Dost was hoping for a more rosy picture, he was happy with the insight the results gave him. ‘We now know where the leak is.’

Dost cites two main reasons for the high workload: ‘the Celeanum has two locations,’ he explains. ‘Some teachers have to cycle from one location to the other between their lessons. This was often at the expense of their breaks. In addition, the high grading burden in junior grades played an important role.’ For the first problem, Dost quickly found a solution: from now on, teachers usually have an in-between hour when they have to commute between locations. ‘It's a simple intervention,’ says Dost, ‘but you have to know that there are gains to be made there.’

For the second problem, Dost had no immediate solution. How could he tackle the review burden? ‘I requested a follow-up meeting at DUO-Onderwijs to spar,’ says Dost. ‘The researchers do not sit in the rector's chair, but they can mirror very well. That was valuable. I tend to want to solve everything myself, but what solutions do the staff see? In the follow-up interview, it became clear to me that I mainly needed to talk to the individual staff members.’

Meanwhile, Dost has had quite a few discussions: ‘We talk to teachers about how they can organise their PTA differently so that they have less revision work. We also want to use more activating didactics and differentiation to reduce the test pressure. To this end, we are now planning training courses.’ During the interviews, Dost noticed that staff often set the bar high for themselves. ‘I was never so aware of that before the study,’ says Dost. ‘A teacher does not have to develop new teaching for every year layer every school year. You can't and you are not expected to,’ he says firmly. ‘I now make it clear where the bar is set. I express my appreciation for teachers more often. After all, they provide education day in and day out.’