HEADteachers in the North-East fear the drive to improve education will put even greater pressure on their already strained workloads.

Yesterday, The Northern Echo highlighted the plight of one head, Tim Gunn, of Wolsingham Primary School, who is quitting his job to become a lorry driver after becoming disenchanted with the profession and the increasing red tape.

While teaching staff believe such resignations will be very rare, they warn that more and more pressure is being piled on their colleagues.

New Department for Education and Employment (DFEE) initiatives allowing senior teachers to apply for a £2,000 salary boost - known as threshold payments - and future plans to introduce direct performance related pay scales has given great cause for concern.

New chairman of Durham Association of Secondary Headteachers, David Grigg, said: "Somebody who resigns the post is going to be an unusual case. But there is work overload - particularly in this term when a lot of statutory responsibility needs attention - which has been exacerbated by the threshold payments.

"It contributes to a more stressful time in bureaucracy terms. Most of us tend to be a robust group but I wouldn't be critical of anyone who decided it was not for them."

Teachers applying for threshold payments must fill in a form which takes them an average of ten hours to complete before headteachers must assess them.

Secondary heads can have as many as 60 forms to analyse with around an hour needed to assess each application. The advent of a performance related pay scheme next year will further add to this workload.

Austin Mitchell, head teacher of Framwellgate Moor School in County Durham, has 49 forms to assess.

He said: "I cannot see me finding significant blocks of time during a normal working week to do the job justice."

A DFEE spokesperson said: "We are sympathetic to the extra workload but heads have a legal responsibility to evaluate teaching standards in schools and we have made the workload manageable.

"Heads in larger schools will be able to delegate some elements to senior colleagues while retaining control over decisions made."

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