We analysed the staff survey in the current toolkit and identified it as a resource that was key to the linear journey through the toolkit.
It was important because almost all the school leaders we spoke to ran regular staff surveys related to workload or wellbeing.
Similarly, if a user is following the 3 steps of the toolkit to identify, address and evaluate, the workload survey is the first resource they would see, and therefore potentially use.
In the old toolkit, the survey was not included in the evaluate section. But in our research users said the main way they would evaluate if workload reduction measures had been successful would be through running surveys. Users expected to see it in there too – so as a resource, it connected the whole toolkit together.
The survey also links directly to all the different workload areas in the address section of the toolkit.
We thought that because of it's importance, it could become a first entry point for many users to the service. We therefore decided to look at the survey as a team.
To do this we held a workshop.
What we did
We started by looking at everything we had been told about surveys in research.
We went through all the existing questions in the survey and mapped them to workload issues in the toolkit. Any questions that didn't fit into a workload area we grouped into new ones in 'other'.
We also mapped the workload issues that had been raised by users in our research that didn't have workload areas in the toolkit, to make sure we were addressing everything.
Then we decided if the questions needed to be changed or if they were still appropriate.
We came up with new ideas for the questions that needed changing and added new questions to address the additional issues that had been raised in our research. This included questions more generally about school staff workload, for example, if overall they felt their workload was manageable or they felt able to report workload issues to leadership.
Once we had agreed that we had a better idea of what the questions should be, we looked at the format of the survey.
We started with a design criticism of the existing survey. We agreed on a set of actions and used them to update the survey.
To improve the survey we:
grouped the questions, so that the survey led to workload areas our toolkit could help users with
created an online form which users could digitally edit for use in their school, in addition to a paper survey
changed the scale used to answer questions more reflective of other popular school surveys
What we found
We tested the new survey in detail with school leaders in research. Generally, the new survey tested well.
What we decided
From this round of research, we decided to:
rewrite the advice for the survey to better reflect how the advice was from school leaders who had helped with the toolkit, not DFE
make clearer the survey was adaptable
include some other workload areas, including safeguarding, report writing, CPD and supporting pupils with SEN
make the scale simpler for answering questions on workload
improve wording to be more similar to terms used in schools
add a question to assess if they felt workload had reduced over the last 12 months
ask in the survey what they thought could be done to improve workload
What we want to investigate
In the future, we think the survey should be tested more with school staff members such as teachers or teaching assistants. It could also be iterated based on feedback from schools.