“You create your opportunities by asking for them.”
Shakti Gawain
Teachers’ anger over wording of the January pay offer has spawned a fresh crisis in education, but they’re focusing that anger on the wrong people.
The 2024-25 pay offer was a missed opportunity to address teachers’ work-life balance.
After the controversial decision to pause industrial action at the last moment at the start of January, the fun times continued with a last minute pay offer sent to teachers on the evening of Friday the 31st January.
While the financial side was largely what was expected, as it just reached the red line of matching what England and Wales had been offered in terms of percentages, the associated conditional wording caused uproar in teachers’ households across Northern Ireland.
Teachers wanted some concrete movement on workload, including some mechanism to ensure their rights and entitlements under the latest workload agreement are being enforced in schools. Instead they read a rehash of the terms and conditions from the Jordanstown Agreement, and some ill-judged language which seemed to suggest that the Minister was asking them to give up their right to strike.
This was further hampered by the last-minute nature of the negotiations, and teacher trade unions will likely regret sending the offer out without extensive explanatory notes.
“Who acts in haste repents at leisure.”
Aesop
While think1265 are of course interested in the “conditions” bit of any pay and conditions offer, the anger from teachers over the 31st of Jan pay offer has been focused at everywhere else but where it should be. While teaching trade unions have received the brunt of it, the think1265 team have come under fire too. Sitting on the side lines, merrily watching the circular firing squad in action, will be the employers and the Minister.
Here’s our take on the offer, for what it’s worth. TL;DR? The wording was so opaque and worrying that most teachers will have voted before even reading through the thing properly. We understand that the management side were warned about this, but insisted on including the most hated clause in the teachers’ contract in spite of these warnings. And the bit about holding back on industrial action could have easily been improved by the simple line: “This agreement does not affect teachers’ rights to take legal industrial action under the terms of The Trade Union and Labour Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1995.”
But it wasn’t. Hey ho.
The simple fact is many teachers want a return to ASOSA, even if it costs them a 5.5% loss in earnings, because their workload is intolerable and unachievable. ASOSA eliminates much of the “make-work” which chews through teachers’ non-contact time, pushing more and more important work into early morning and late evenings. In the ASOSA which ended last April teachers reported having more time to prepare lessons, a better work-life balance, and improved teaching and learning in their classroom.
But ASOSA is not a solution to teachers’ workload; rather it’s a type of industrial action designed to force the management side to do X, Y or Z in a pay and conditions dispute. The solution to workload is the implementation in every school of the existing workload agreement, something which should have been happening for seven months now.
This pay offer included some good time-bound movements about workload working groups, and we understand that there was talk at last about looking at ETI putting time budgets and workload into their inspection framework. That may well help with the implementation of TNC 2024/2, but none of this was clear in the offer.
From the teachers’ perspective they wanted some concrete promise that their workload would improve with immediate effect, and instead they got a reminder of a 40-year old clause about working at home – a practice all sides now consider “not satisfactory” – and a perceived threat about limiting their right to strike. It was a wasted opportunity.
The Minister, Mr Givan, is a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, a party with a long history of extreme caution about the wording and implications of any document which crosses their desk. To allow such a poorly framed offer to be released without context or time for reflection seems extraordinary.
We’re pausing campaigning for a few weeks while the pay offer crisis works itself out.
It’ll be a few more days before the results of union consultation are known, but in the meantime think1265 are going to pause campaigning for a few weeks while this pay issue gets resolved. Over the year we have been subject to attacks by the Department, the employers, school leaders, and even teaching trade unions, and all this is par for the course. But in the last few days we have become a lightning rod for some angry teachers as well, even though we are nothing whatsoever to do with pay negotiations.
Regardless of anything else, the solution to teachers’ workload problems in the place where they work already exists in section 5.8 of TNC 2024/2. But pulling that trigger is hard. As long as it’s easier to unleash broadsides against the world and their mother on social media, and as long as it’s easier to wait for national ASOSA instructions (which most teachers treat as a Woolworths “pick and mix” anyway), this impasse will continue.
The simple fact is that workload pressures are devastating many teachers in this country, but the power dynamic in schools is such that most teachers aren’t brave enough to challenge their leaders when their workload rights are being breached. Until the latter issue is resolved, the only lifeboat in a sea of unreasonable and unsustainable workload pressures remains ASOSA.
We’ve been saying that for a year now, and we’ll be saying it again later this month. But in the meantime, hang in there, and if another pay offer crosses your email maybe give it a few hours of thought before rejecting it?
Workload and DTB survey receives 2845 responses from teachers across Northern Ireland!
You can read our full survey report here.
The think1265 team have been staggered by the response to our survey last week, and almost 3000 teachers have shared their experiences about workload and Directed Time budgets so far this year. That’s close to 15% of the teaching workforce.
While we’re currently working on the results for publication here as soon as possible, the picture presented by our survey is grave. While there are definitely good schools out there making much more effort over the DTBs they produce, three out of ten teachers report not even getting a DTB in spite of it being the professional obligation of Principals to produce these since 1988.
Have you received a directed time budget so far this year? (blue = yes)
DTBs aside, the most worrying results come from responses to do with workload. Only 16% of respondents describe their workload as “reasonable”, although the right to a reasonable workload is enshrined in the latest workload agreement. More concerning still is the 93% of teachers who say they cannot normally complete their work within school working hours, which is an entitlement of all teachers under the TNC 2024/2 workload agreement.
The most worrying results for school leaders are to do with workload, stress and the desire to return to ASOSA.
The latest workload agreement, TNC 2024/2, which was part of the pay settlement between management and teachers in spring 2024, has a strong emphasis on staff welfare and the H&S impacts of excessive workload. It was intended to make workloads sustainable within schools, leading to happier, healthier staff, which leads to better outcomes for students. This absolutely does not seem to be happening.
So far this year would you describe your current workload as stressful?
If there was a vote tomorrow about returning to ASOSA, what way would you vote? (blue = yes, I would vote for ASOSA)
Over 1000 teachers left detailed comments about their experiences this year so far.
While we need to work through every comment to ensure anonymity for teachers, we will be publishing them all in our final report and on this website. While the facts and figures of how teachers feel they’re getting on so far this year are useful and frightening, nothing prepares you for the individual voices of struggling teachers, just six weeks into the new term.
We will publish all the data as soon as possible, but it is immediately apparent that with the exception of a few schools with exceptional leadership, TNC 2024/2 is not being implemented in schools across Northern Ireland. Everyone, from the Minister for Education to the newest qualified teacher, needs to look hard at what’s happening in our education sector right now, and honestly – once for all – work together to fix this workload crisis. We have contractual agreements in place to do this; employers and Principals have an obligation to implement these agreements in their schools, and unless something happens about this right now teachers will have nowhere else to turn but widespread industrial action…
… and the workload vicious cycle think1265 has been warning about for six months will spin once again.
“Stressed beyond measure. In tears daily. My Mental health cannot take much more.”
Response to the think1265 DTB and Workload survey
Welcome to think1265. Together we’ll make teachers’ workload work.
In August 2024 the latest workload agreement between the Department of Education, employers and teaching unions became live. TNC 2024/2 is the most recent attempt to crack the problem of excessive teacher workload in Northern Ireland, and it came at the end of extensive industrial action lasting several years. Along with a pay agreement and ongoing working groups looking at workload in the sector, the full implementation of TNC 2024 / 2 was agreed by all sides as a condition to ending the industrial action including Action Short Of Strike Action (ASOSA).
Key to the implementation of TNC 2024/2 is effective Directed Time budgeting by Principals in all schools, ensuring that teachers’ workload is managed properly. Failure to produce a time budget at all leaves the Principal in breach of section 4.3 of TNC 2024/2, and failure to produce a detailed budget outlining how all professional duties are accounted for in the 1265 hours will very likely breach section 5 of the agreement.
The aim of think1265 is to help all parties – from leaders to teachers – to finally implement the agreed contractual workload agreements in our schools and colleges in Northern Ireland. But to do this we need your help.
A failure by school leaders to implement the revised workload agreement TNC 2024/2 after 1st August 2024 would leave them in breach of the Teachers’ Pay Agreement, TNC 2024/1, paragraph 5.
What teachers need to do
1. Check your DTB
You need to check that your DTB exists; that it covers all the tasks and duties you have, that it gives appropriate time to finish this work, and that it is individualised to you. The think1265 DTB checklist (and solutions) is here.
2. Agree fixes
When you encounter problems with your DTB it’s important to seek solutions quickly. Ultimately you’ll need to come to agreement with the Principal about how to fix the problem, though you may need your union to help you do this. We have a list of “dos and don’ts” for DTB problems on our clinic page, here.
3. Track your time
The DTB gives you tasks and timings for the year, but to ensure your workload remains within this plan you must track your own time. Good news, though – you only need track the non-contact time (excluding teaching and duties.) This is where the excess workload creeps in. Our tracking tools are found here.
What school leaders should do
1. Produce the DTBs
It’s your professional duty to have individualised DTBs given to staff before the first day of teaching, and if you fail to do this you are breaching the recent pay agreement. But this is a complex task, so you can spread this around your leadership team who can act on your behalf. Just remember, though – you’re ultimately responsible for what’s in the DTBs.
2. Listen to staff
DTB production will be easier if you ask staff to contribute to the process. Only individual teachers know how long X,Y or Z takes in their roles, so ask them to tell you – it’s the quickest way of getting this right.
Once you know what the time demands are on individual teachers you can plan much more effectively.
3. Monitor DTBs
A great idea some leaders have suggested to think1265 is to have time budgets as a standing item on Subject / Departmental agenda. By asking teachers at a subject level to pass upward how their budgets are working out (i.e. too little time for X, or far too much time allocated for Y) you can make better decisions next year.
Good Friday in…
Designed and produced by teachers and trade unionists. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information on this site, teacher and union representatives are advised to contact their own trade union reps before taking action which might leave them in breach of contract. Think1265 uses WordPress, which uses cookies for functionality. Think1265 does not use any cookies for any purpose other than those used by WordPress for site functionality, and no personal information is retained or processed by think1265 without users’ specific permission. © 2025 think1265