With the current and ever increasing demands of remote learning, many teachers are on the brink of burnout as they are struggling both mentally and physically. A survey from TES has reported that approximately 62 percent of teachers feel drained and mentally exhausted this term alone, whilst 17 percent feel “physically and mentally on the brink”, and 30 percent feel that they are “just about coping”. This is an alarming result, and it indicates that a significant overhaul is required in order to make online teaching and learning more sustainable.
Many teachers feel that the work load has significantly increased since teaching remotely. Live remote lessons have proven to be very challenging due to the level of detailed planning required, as well as a lack of flexibility. A greater dependency on email communication also makes it harder to stay in touch. It can also be difficult trying to make lessons interesting and engaging online, whilst also attempting to track each student’s progress and meet their individual needs.
Some teachers have even decided to resign altogether due to a lack of regard for teacher health, safety or wellbeing. Worryingly, an Ofsted report suggested that even a blended learning approach, which includes remote learning with face-to-face teaching, could also pose a threat to teacher wellbeing if not carefully thought through and structured. With an element of remote learning likely to remain in the future, changes clearly need to be made in order to ensure that future teaching strategy is better balanced and more manageable.
Are there any solutions to this problem? One solution may be to take advantage of online learning platforms that do a lot of the hard work for teachers. CoreSciences is a great example of this. As an online GCSE Science platform CoreSciences is fully comprehensive and includes lesson plans and tests for both theory work and all required practicals. It also provides detailed performance analyses of classes and each individual student which facilitates easy and accurate monitoring of student progress. Therefore, most of the arduous administrative tasks that teachers are currently struggling with are completely taken care of, freeing up valuable time and leaving them less like to suffer from chronic stress or burnout.