Heads were swamped with nearly 1.3million words of Government guidance last year - one and a half times as many as in the Bible.They were sent more than 250 documents including a 'simplification plan' detailing how officials had reduced bureaucracy. It ran to 90 pages!
It's a wonder any teacher has time for teaching and even worse it's now so bad that this government ensuring that each school has a manager to handle it all!
What a way to run education. You generate a problem through incompetence and misguided belief that the government has to pander to every whim or lobby group or risk alienating voters or even worse risk not being seen as 'tolerant'.
Then you set about releasing the curse of 'management' to 'fix' it. It's the NHS all over again.
Labour's 1.3m words of advice for schools: Volume of annual guidance swamps teachers
Heads were swamped with nearly 1.3million words of Government guidance last year - one and a half times as many as in the Bible.
They were sent more than 250 documents including a 'simplification plan' detailing how officials had reduced bureaucracy. It ran to 90 pages.
If all the 3,982 pages of guidance emailed to schools between April 2008 and April 2009 were printed, the stack of paper would be 16inches thick.
Other information included a document on 'reducing data burdens', as well as advice on what to look for when buying a musical instrument and a guide to the EU member states.The stream of paperwork was revealed by the Conservatives, who
analysed documents sent in a fortnightly email from the Department for
Children, Schools and Families.
Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove accused ministers of inundating schools with rules and guidance instead of letting teachers get on with their jobs.
'Instead of giving teachers the powers they need over discipline or fixing the devaluation of the exam system, [Schools Secretary] Ed Balls is swamping schools with such a tide of paper that it is obvious heads cannot read more than a fraction,' Mr Gove said.
'We will give teachers much more freedom, but we will make them more accountable to parents instead of bureaucrats.'
The guidance notes run to 1,269,000 words. This compares with 788,000 in the King James Bible and 885,000 in the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
Several of the missives cover data collection, while a guide for school governors published in April lists 37 policies schools are legally required to draw up, including rules on target-setting, community cohesion, accessibility and collective worship.
John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: 'Unless over-regulation is reduced schools will continue to sink under its weight. Heads are forced to make a judgement as to what they can implement and what they can't but the inspection system assumes it all should have been implemented.'
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said it was not Government policy to email full documents to schools, and that hard copies were sent only in 'exceptional circumstances'.She added: 'We make no apology for alerting schools to the information they need to deal with important issues like child protection, bullying and race equality.
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