It varies from school to school because heads interpret the centrally imposed requirements differently. It also depends on the stage of a teacher's career. For recently qualified teachers, the biggest burden can be having to write a detailed plan of every lesson they teach, carefully differentiated according to the needs of able, average and less able pupils, as well as the "gifted and talented", those who have special needs or speak English as an additional language. In some schools, that can run to 2,000 words a day.

The heaviest load is carried by heads of department, who are responsible for the elaborate self-evaluation forms that Ofsted inspectors now demand. Most time-consuming for rank-and-file teachers is the regular - often fortnightly - grading of every pupil, the form-filling generated by every disciplinary action they take and - most controversially - the innocent-sounding "helping pupils with their coursework", which can involve extensive (but illegal) rewriting of lengthy essays. Every teacher could add to the list and most of it is time taken away from teaching.