In what has become an annual and increasingly frustrating ritual, the Department for Education has again published a series of significant statutory updates in the final weeks of the school summer term.
This year key documents such as the revised Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework, the updated Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, the new writing framework and the updated relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance were released with little time for schools to meaningfully digest, plan or prepare for their implementation.
These publications alone total 435 pages. This creates a huge amount of unnecessary pressure on schools and undermines any commitment that the DfE claims to have to reducing workload and supporting staff wellbeing.
DfE guidance updates
Publishing late in the summer term could be down to a belief that school staff have more free time as the year comes to an end. But this is far from true.
Colleagues working in schools are operating under immense strain. The summer term is a time of transition, pupil assessments, staff changes, end-of-year reports and essential planning for September. For many, it’s also a period when fatigue is most acutely felt after months of unrelenting pressure.
Publishing statutory frameworks and guidance during this period forces schools to either scramble to interpret and respond to changes while still juggling end-of-term commitments or defer the work to the precious weeks of summer that should be used for rest and recuperation.
What’s more, it means leaders are expected to critically evaluate content and potentially consult governors or parents - which demands time, collaboration and clarity. Dropping these documents into the public domain in mid-July does not allow for any of these.
Impact on workload and wellbeing
The situation also suggests a growing dissonance between the DfE’s rhetoric around tackling workload and the reality faced by schools.
In March 2024 the DfE released an updated workload reduction toolkit and reaffirmed its aim to address burnout and attrition in the teaching profession. However, late-term guidance publications do the exact opposite - they erode trust, disregard staff wellbeing and force school leaders into reactive rather than strategic leadership.
The summer break should be a time when teachers and leaders can switch off and recharge, and therefore return ready to lead learning. Instead, many had no choice but to print off newly released guidance to read on holiday so that they can rewrite policies over August weekends, feeling anxious that they’ve missed something crucial.
This reactive culture is not conducive to effective planning or high standards. It also hits smaller schools especially hard.
Call for change
If the DfE is truly serious about reducing workload and supporting staff wellbeing, it must change how and when it releases key statutory guidance. It is not unreasonable to expect:
1. A clear annual publication timeline: statutory guidance updates should be scheduled with a fixed, published annual release point - ideally in the spring term - giving schools at least a term’s notice for preparation and implementation.
2. A minimum three-month implementation period: no statutory guidance should come into force without a minimum three-month lead-in time, allowing for professional development, planning and meaningful engagement with the content.
3. Effective communication channels: changes to guidance must be clearly communicated, summarised and accompanied by practical implementation support; not simply uploaded to the DfE website, leaving many wondering what the key changes are.
4. Centralised CPD support: the DfE should invest in free, high-quality webinars and training modules to accompany major guidance changes, reducing the burden on individual schools to interpret and disseminate information alone.
5. Recognition of cumulative impact: when publishing multiple frameworks and guidance updates, the DfE should consider the cumulative effect on school capacity. Releasing several major documents within days of each other is not only poor planning but also disrespectful to the profession.
A chance to rebuild trust
At a time when retention is one of the biggest crises facing the education sector, decisions like these matter. The publication of statutory guidance should be part of a supportive infrastructure, not a source of stress.
If the DfE wants to demonstrate that it understands the lived reality of schools, it must start by respecting their time - and their term dates.
Until then, the late-July guidance dump will remain symbolic of a department out of step with the very people it claims to serve.
Professor Michael Green is a visiting professor in the School of Education at the University of Greenwich
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