Hello, Tappsters!
Summer might be creeping closer, but there’s still plenty of school life left to navigate – and we’ve got this week’s insights to help you power through the final push.
1. Heatwave
The thermometers hit the highest temperatures for 2025 this week – so what did that mean for schools? Primaries and secondaries took different approaches:
🥤Increased water breaks (23% secondary vs 64% in primary)
👚 Relaxed uniform rules (65% in secondary vs 20% in primary)
🚪 Students kept inside at break (1% of secondary vs 14% in primary)
How relaxed was “relaxed uniform”?
In secondary schools where the teachers reported experiencing hot weather…
70% relaxed the uniform a little and ditched, for example, blazers. However, 17% went further and moved to PE kit! And 1% allowed students to wear non-school uniform.
The power of the wet paper towels
In these though times, Teacher Tapp thought you would be pleased to know that those blue paper towels are out in force and used to cool down students (and maybe staff??) in 8% of schools.
2. “Change those grades!”
If you have ever fielded emails from someone interfering with your mark book and demanded grades were changed – although it’s not a great situation, you make take some solace in the fact you aren’t the only one.
This has happened to a huge 44% of primary school teachers, and 16% of secondary school teachers the last time they assessed students.
And if you’re thinking this is a ‘year six’ problem, then you might be surprised to learn this is as common in EYFS/KS1 and KS2.
Primary teachers in academies were more likely to say they felt pressured when compared to teachers in local authority schools (35% vs 25%).
Parents were LESS likely to be the cause of pressure than senior leaders! Of those who DID face pressure, half felt it from senior leaders, but only 15% from parents.
3. Is marking the best CPD?
Exam season for both primary and secondary continues, and teachers are working hard as examiners to ensure students receive their grades.
25% of secondary and 3% of primary teachers are examining this year – and it’s easy to see why it’s popular.
Whether you’re a marker or not – secondary teachers agree – the experience of being a paid examiner is useful: 89% of teachers who have never examined agree that examining gives teachers useful insights, and 93% of current GCSE examiners feel the same.
Of those secondary teachers, not marking, 70% cited time reasons – but maybe they would be happy to hear the news that of those who are marking this year, they have found a way to get some of the work done during the school day, with 31% of secondary using their PPA to mark.
4. Tracking stress (and why we keep asking the same questions)
If you have ever answered a Teacher Tapp question and had a nagging feeling you have seen it before, the chances are you are correct – we have asked before!
We regularly repeat around 8 questions each month, with many more asked termly or annually. These repeated questions are some of the most valuable because they help us track changes over time in teaching. People often say things like “behaviour is worse than it was 10 years ago” or “teacher morale has never been lower” – but how do we know if that’s true? By asking the same questions at regular intervals, Teacher Tapp can show whether these trends are real.
And one example of these came up last week – all about causes of stress!
How stressed are teachers in the summer term?
Compared to the rest of the year, summer term is the nice one, right? Maybe not.
📝 Compared to January, things are looking a little less stressful for administration from (dropped from 45% to 38%).
⛔️ Behaviour wise, things are a little easier in June compared to December and February (48% DOWN from 52%).
❤️ Some things clearly kick off once the students are back, and just stay at a constant level. Pastoral concerns are low in September (29%) but then from October onwards stay at around 35%.
👩🏫 Good news! Lesson prep is the lowest it has been all year! Just 15% in June.
And what about year on year? Is this summer better than previous ones? The last time we asked this question was June 2022.
🆙 Compared to June 2022, student behaviour is bothering slightly more of you (45% vs 38%).
⬇️ Admin tasks are causing unhappiness for slightly fewer of you (42% vs 50%).
⬇️⬇️ And the number bothered by accountability is DOWN – 44% in June 2022, to 27% today!
+ TLDR: TLDR don’t work
A few weeks ago, we ran an experiment on Teacher Tapp. For 7 days, half of Tappers got a ‘TLDR’ summary of the Daily Read. The other half of you didn’t.
We wanted to know:
(a) Would fewer Tappers click the article (because you’d already got the gist)?
(b) Would more of you enjoy the daily reads (for the same reason)?
What happened?
Clicks initially went up for the TLDR group—probably because the longer blurb caught the eye.
But, after a few days, clicks dropped slightly below normal—though not by enough to mean anything.
At the end of the week, we asked both groups how much you’d enjoyed the reads that week and… the results were basically identical.
No effect for authors. No effect for readers.
So we killed the TLDRs!
Daily Reads
Last week lots of the blogs were being clicked! Apart from our own fabulous Teacher Tapp hacks (and you can read that here) our most read blog was this from the FFT on study leave.
Have you seen a great blog you think would make a great daily read? Let us know by emailing england@teachertapp.co.uk and we will check it out!
