A teacher's guide to deciding what can wait

When I taught Year 6, there was always another job waiting.

Marking. Planning. A parent email. A resource to find. A data entry task that would apparently take “just a few minutes”. Then a meeting overran, a child needed more support, and the time I had set aside disappeared.

The difficult part was not knowing that the work mattered. Most of it did.

The difficult part was deciding what could wait without feeling that I was letting somebody down.

Teachers are surrounded by systems that tell us what needs doing. Calendars, policies, emails, marking schedules, assessment windows and shared spreadsheets all add their own demands. Far fewer systems help us decide what does not need doing today.

That decision still has to be made. If it is not, the work simply expands into the evening.

Start with the time you actually have

A useful way to decide what can wait is to begin with the available time, rather than the full list of jobs.

Look at the week in front of you.

How much PPA do you have? Which preparation periods are real? Is there a meeting after school? Are you on duty? Do you have a parents’ evening or a trip? Have you already promised yourself that you will leave at a reasonable time on one evening?

That last point counts too.

Your evenings and weekends are not an unlimited reserve of teacher time. You may choose to use some of them during a particularly busy week, but that choice should be visible. It should not happen simply because the list was too long.

Teacher workload research has repeatedly identified planning, marking, data and general administration as major sources of pressure. The Department for Education’s workload resources and the Education Endowment Foundation’s review of teacher workload both point towards reducing unnecessary work, not finding ever more efficient ways to absorb it.

A plan that contains more work than time is not realistic. It turns the gap into private guilt.

Separate real deadlines from self-imposed ones

Not every deadline has the same weight.

Some deadlines come from outside you. A safeguarding concern needs dealing with. A report has to be submitted by a fixed date. Exam entries, statutory returns and essential planning for tomorrow may have consequences if they are missed.

Other deadlines are real but flexible. A resource would be useful by Friday, but Monday would also work. A set of books could be marked this week or at the start of next week. A parent needs a reply, but not necessarily tonight.

Then there are deadlines that exist mainly because you wrote them down.

That does not make them foolish. Teachers often set their own deadlines because we are trying to stay ahead. The problem comes when every personal intention starts to feel as binding as a safeguarding action or an external submission.

For each task, ask:

• Who set the deadline?
• What happens if it moves by a day?
• Who is waiting for it?
• Does anyone need the finished version, or just the information it contains?
• Is there a smaller version that would do for now?

This is not about ignoring responsibilities. It is about giving them the right amount of weight.

“Finish the entire display” may become “put up the essential information”.

“Mark every book in detail” may become “identify the main misconceptions and plan the next teaching step”.

“Rewrite all the resources” may become “use last year’s version and change what needs changing”.

The work has not disappeared. You have made a more honest decision about what it needs to look like.

Ask what happens if it waits

When everything feels urgent, imagine the consequence of leaving each job until tomorrow.

Some jobs become genuinely harder or more serious if they wait. Put those near the front.

Some jobs create inconvenience but no real harm. Put those in the next available space.

Some jobs mostly create discomfort because they are visible on your list. Those may be the ones to reduce, question or remove.

A simple set of questions can help:

1. Does this affect safety, safeguarding or an immediate pupil need?
2. Does this need to happen before the next lesson or meeting?
3. Is someone making a decision based on this?
4. Will doing it now change what pupils learn or what I need to do next?
5. What is the consequence of waiting until tomorrow, Friday or next week?

You do not need a perfect answer. You need enough information to make one clear decision.

There is also a question worth asking about administrative tasks:

Who will use this, and what will they do with it?

If the answer is unclear, that does not automatically mean the task can be ignored. It does mean you may need to ask for clarification before giving it another hour of your evening.

The NEU’s guidance on teachers’ workload and working hours is useful here, particularly when you need to understand what is required, what is reasonable and what should be discussed with your school.

Decide whether the job needs doing in that form

Teachers are often good at completing the version of a task we first imagined.

That can be a problem.

A lesson resource becomes a polished slide deck. A feedback task becomes a detailed comment on every piece of work. A quick parent update becomes a carefully drafted email that takes half an hour.

Before continuing, ask whether the form of the task is doing useful work.

Would pupils notice the difference? Would a colleague make a different decision? Would you teach something differently because of the extra detail?

Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the extra work is mostly there because we have got used to doing it that way.

“Good enough” is not the same as careless. It means the standard matches the purpose and the time available.

A clear worksheet may be enough. A short whole-class feedback note may be more useful than thirty individual comments. A rough plan for tomorrow may be sensible when the alternative is spending two hours making it look finished.

You are still using professional judgement. You are simply using it to protect the work that matters most.

When there is not enough time, make the gap visible

There will be weeks when sensible decisions are not enough.

You can remove cosmetic work, shorten admin and protect the most important planning, and still have more work than time.

That is not a personal failure. It is a workload problem.

The temptation is to carry the gap privately. You stay late. You work on Sunday. You promise yourself that next week will be calmer. Then next week brings a cover change, a meeting, a difficult conversation and three more emails.

At some point, the useful next step is an actual conversation.

Be specific. Take the list of work and the time available. Explain what will fit and what will not. Ask which task should move, which standard can be reduced, or which deadline should change.

You might say:

“I have enough time to complete two of these three tasks properly by Friday. Which would you like me to prioritise?”

Or:

“I can complete the data return, but I cannot also finish the resource revisions this week. Can we agree which one needs to come first?”

That is a professional conversation. It is clearer than trying to complete everything badly and hoping nobody notices the cost.

Leave yourself a way back in

Deciding that something can wait is easier when you know you will not lose it.

Before you stop, write down the first step for when you return.

Not “finish planning”.

Try:

• “Open the shared maths folder.”
• “Use last year’s slides and change the starter.”
• “Email Sam about the missing assessment.”
• “Mark questions 1–5 first.”

This takes less than a minute, but it means you do not have to reconstruct the whole task when you are tired. You can come back to a starting point rather than a vague feeling that something is unfinished.

You can also leave a short note about what has changed. Perhaps the books are now in a different pile. Perhaps a colleague has already sent the resource. Perhaps the deadline has moved.

Stopping is part of managing the work. It is not proof that you have failed to finish the week.

Teacher Sorted is designed around this problem. It lets you compare the work with the time you have chosen to make available, keeps real deadlines separate from the day you plan to work, and shows the gap when the two do not fit. It does not move tasks or change deadlines without your say-so. You still decide what to protect, move, reduce or discuss.

You can see how Teacher Sorted works if that would be useful.

A decision you can use today

At the end of the day, choose one task from your list and ask:

• Does this truly need doing today?
• What happens if it waits?
• Does it need doing in this form?
• If there is not enough time, who needs to know?

Then make the decision and record it.

Some work will still need doing tomorrow. That is normal. The aim is not to create a week with nothing left on the list. Teaching does not work like that.

The aim is to stop every unfinished task following you home as if it has the same urgency.

You have limited time. Use it for the work that needs it most, and make the rest wait on purpose.