Is NSW's plan to slash admin working?

Teachers in New South Wales (NSW) have been promised a reduction in administrative workload for years. Reviews and reports acknowledge the same problem: teachers are spending far too much time on compliance, data entry, and paperwork that does little to improve student learning.

The OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS, 2018) confirms that this is not just a local frustration. Across the world, excessive administration is one of the biggest drivers of stress and a leading factor in why teachers leave the profession. In fact, the survey found that teachers consistently report wanting more time for lesson preparation, collaboration, and feedback — the very things that make the most difference in classrooms.

So why are teachers still buried in tasks that don’t support teaching?

• Programs and policies are often written to meet audit requirements rather than classroom needs

• Compliance processes multiply year after year without old ones being retired

• Schools lack systems that actually save time, leaving teachers to duplicate work across documents, spreadsheets, and platforms

The irony is that all of this takes time away from the core business of teaching. Every hour spent updating paperwork is an hour not spent refining a lesson, analysing student progress, or building relationships with learners. Whilst there have been some promising successes, no solution that can solve the problem at scale has been forthcoming (until now).

What teachers need are tools and processes that strike a better balance. They require a comprehensive curriculum improvement platform that can allow teachers, faculties (or stages) and schools to:

• Clarify curriculum priorities without drowning teachers in jargon

• Connect outcomes directly to classroom practice

• Allow teachers to continuously improve their lessons

• Capture feedback and data to fuel future improvement

• Be easy to adapt when a new syllabus lands

• Save time by cutting duplication, not adding to it

Planuva was designed with this challenge in mind. It helps schools create structured, flexible, and usable programs that tick the boxes without wasting teachers’ time. The aim is simple: less paperwork, more teaching.

Learn more at https://planuva.com