Our education system is lighting the burnout match. Is there anything we can do to stop it?

Schools as the cause and cure of burnout

Hi! I’m Anna from The Burnout Rebellion 🌊 🍂. I’m here to help you navigate the pivot moments in your life. Whether it’s burnout, searching for your purpose or heading in a new direction, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

You know when you hit that pivot moment in your life, that moment when you know your life has to change? Well, I am living through that right now. On the 19th of July this year, I left my job with no plan other than to make my 5 and 85-year-old self proud. I share personal essays about my own journey, particularly my return to writing, research and nature, as well as providing tips, interviews and podcasts from others who’ve navigated this path. Join me as I share with you not only how you can change your life, but how you can also find a tribe of people doing the same. Welcome to the rebellion where nothing is impossible.

What subscribers received recently:

• A chance to discuss with others what values mean to them, helping us all navigate this journey ahead.

• An update on my gardening life in Notes from the garden.

• Ways to get closer to the season and yourself using an alter

What’s coming up:

• How to build the foundation of your rebellion

• The first of the Burnout Rebel interview series 🎉

• The Burnout Rebellion Thread; What burnout behaviours are you struggling to let go of?

• In the toolkit; Identifying your PiPs and how they can help start your own revolution

Want to learn more about what I do? Click here to see my hero post.

Today I have something a little different for you. The Burnout Rebellion is and will always be about us, the Burnout Rebels but many of us wonder where our burnout behaviours have originated, why do we feel the need to work in the way we do? Where have we learnt these behaviours to push ourselves beyond our means? I recently posted a note about schools and what I wished I would have been taught. The responses made me realise how so many of us feel that the education system has to change and that our education has perhaps driven us all in the wrong direction. This week I have an opinion piece for you on how schools can both be the cause and cure of burnout. Of course it is not the only cause but it is a think piece, an exploration into how our lives could be different if schools did not embrace hustle culture. My hope is that as Burnout Rebels we can change things not just for ourselves, but for generations to come. Really looking forward to the discussion this will generate.

I can’t wait to catch you in the comments.

Much love,

Anna xx

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

~James Clear

So often when we voice our exhaustion, the burnout itself becomes….individualistic. We are encouraged to believe it is a problem of our own making, a fault in our own systems. If you google how to avoid burnout you’ll find a whole list of ideas that you can do as an individual, but almost none that relate to the systems that surround us. The systems that are so often beyond our control in the workplace, in our homes, even in our schools. How do we change these systems and where do we start? Schools are our first experience of a societal system, a path which we must all go through. But what if this system we have been brought up in not only allows for behaviours that lead to burnout out, but actually encourage them?

The education system forms part of the foundation of our society. We spend a large proportion of our childhood in education settings. During this time our brain is undergoing fundamental changes. In psychology, adolescence is when the brain moves through a period of development from the ages of 10-24¹. We begin to learn how to socialise, how to make decisions, reason. So our environment becomes of the utmost importance. It is where we have the opportunity to not only discover who we are but how we should work as a human being.

But what if the system in which we are educated does not teach us how to do this in a healthy way or at all? What if it does not teach us how to regulate our nervous system, to implement boundaries or to listen to our bodies? What if instead it teaches us to continually push, increase our workload, and compare ourselves against others? What if the very system we are in punishes us for taking days of rest when our bodies feel overwhelmed? Tells us to focus on the outcome and not the journey? Always asks for more? I can imagine how a system like that could shape how an adult may see their whole life.

You fall to the level of your systems. I question what our societal system teaches us about burnout, overworking and exhaustion. Is it showing us how to work sustainably? To discover our talents and potential and hone them? I’m not really sure.

The aim of this article is in no way to blame teachers or staff at schools. They work incredibly hard, I was one of them. Instead it is here to open a discussion and an awareness to how our schools could be different. Radical change instead of add ons. Too often subjects have been added to the teachers list of to dos as opposed to reviewing and breaking down the whole system. What is it that we really want from schools? What does the world need right now and is our education system up to it? The world is changing and so must our systems.

This article was sparked by a note I wrote at the end of September. A list of what I wish we had been taught in school.

99% of the comments agreed and added even more to the wish list; finances, carpentry, how to change a tyre, mechanics, communication, spotting the signs of nature, energetics in the body, wonder. Such awesome suggestions. It was interesting to hear from those that disagreed too. They believed all of these suggestions should be the role of parents and family members. To an extent I agree with this but families are intensely busy places, everyone is working and children often spend more of their waking hours at school than at home, should we not decide as a whole community what we want for our children and teach them together? It raises some questions I’d love to delve into in the comments.

What are your thoughts on this? Who’s responsibility is it to teach skills? Are schools just for learning facts?

What the research tells us; Our children aren’t happy and neither are we

The Good Childhood Report² identified that overall happiness and life satisfaction in children and young people (CYP) has significantly declined in the last 10 years. Children were more unhappy with school than any other life aspect that was examined, with almost 40% of children saying they did not enjoy learning at school³. The figures below show us how long this trend has been occurring. Perhaps people would be forgiven for thinking the first few years were a blip but now the trend represents a significant difference in children’s thoughts and feelings towards school. In Europe, UK teenagers have the least satisfaction with their lives compared to any other country and with 10,000 more students being electively home educated last autumn, it is clear that parents are equally unhappy. Last academic year, 92,000⁴ children were educated at home with rates of absence also on the rise.⁵ Of course there are those that are happy but if we have a school system that isn’t working for a significant proportion of the population, isn’t it time to change?

It isn’t only the students and parents that are unhappy, our teachers are too. They are leaving the profession in droves. In 2022, 40, 000 working age teachers left the profession, the highest ever recorded⁶, with workload cited as a huge issue for teachers.⁷ Burnt out teachers are teaching burnt out children.

This year, I became one of those statistics. I quit my job in teaching after 12 years. When I started teaching, we were told that education could change the world. That if we as teachers could narrow the gap, and ensure every child could achieve, we would be changing lives. And I believed it. And to some extent I still do. But as I moved through the system I could see we were not providing an environment in which individuals could flourish. Well-being was not prioritised. Yes we have talks about mental health, counsellors on site and extremely caring teachers but when this is added on to a system so high stakes and intense is it not counter productive? The term achievement is also one dimensional, schools are examination focussed. Our world has become examination focussed. Show me the piece of paper that shows me you are worthy seems to be our mantra. As teachers plough through the content not much room is left to explore individual passions, particular skills, or head off on a tangent of discovery. We don’t nurture the artist, the curriculum ensures that over 75% of their table isn’t art. We don’t nurture the scientist. The science curriculum is 143 pages long⁸, with very little time to encourage the creativity and original thought required to be a scientist.

I believe that education can both be the cause and cure for burnout culture. My aim at the Burnout Rebellion is to create a community that supports one another out of burnout but to also to look at societal solutions too. Yes we can all attempt to cure ourselves in our 30s and 40s but why is it even happening at all? I believe that as a collective we hold the solution.

Below I have listed 3 examples that in my opinion are causes and possible cures for burnout culture in our education system. I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea how these could work, but all big ideas start from a single thought. We don’t need just a tinkering to our system we need a huge overhaul, that would naturally have a knock on effect to society as a whole. So this isn’t easy. Some may call me a dreamer. That is impossible. Nothing is impossible. Let us start the conversation here.

Cause #1: A universal curriculum that is bursting at the seams

Cure #1: Greater individual choice, no burdensome curriculum and no exams

Cause #2: Hustle culture gone rogue

Hustle culture is defined as overworking, pushing for more, and the idea that there is always something else to strive for. It is the breeding ground of comparison, and a hotbed for burnout.

Imagine this

You head to work for 8:30 in the morning, and as you enter, you are reminded at least 3 times that what you are wearing doesn’t look quite right. You head to the office, your base to start the day, and you see your boss, who wants to have a quiet word with you about the mistakes you made yesterday, that you must address today. Another colleague of yours is being reminded that they are far off their targets on at least 3 separate projects. They are told if they don’t improve in the next 12 weeks, someone even higher will have to mentor them. Someone else arrives 15 minutes later, dejected having met with their own mentor who has said they will help them to perform better by signing them up to extra meetings after work, and giving them more paperwork to do. You secretly hope this won’t be you.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

You know your day is going to be busy. You have 5 meetings back to back on completely different projects, with different people. There is only one project you love, but are told you must spend more time on the ones that you know are not your passion. It makes you dread coming to work, and that passion slowly seeps away from you. You have been asked to prepare something for each one, but as your days are already packed with meetings this preparation has had to happen at home in the evenings and weekends. You’ve managed to prepare for them all, but had to rush the last one, and you hope the person leading the meeting doesn’t notice and it doesn’t get back to your boss. Each meeting is a whirlwind of new information, and you’re expected to remember what happened in the last one despite having no time to look over it. You’re expected to strive for more every meeting and get better and better even though you are working on at least 7 different projects. You’re constantly on edge because you know you could be asked a question any minute but you’re also thinking about what’s happening at home, and the meetings you have coming up but know if you are caught not concentrating a message might be sent to your boss.

Sometimes you’re only given 5 minutes to get to the next one on the other side of the building, which means no time for a toilet break, and if you’re late you’ll be told that your boss will be informed. Another mistake to add to the list. Luckily you make it through the day, but realise you haven’t addressed the mistakes you made yesterday, and spent time with those that you missed work for. You know that it’s likely your boss will keep you behind even later the next day, thinking about it makes you anxious all evening and you really hope you don’t end up on the mentor list.

Now read that again and replace meeting with lesson and projects with subjects, and realise this is the school day of our children of secondary school age. And this is without the additional pressures that come with being a teenager; making friends, navigating change and identity and the whole host of emotions that come with growing up. This account sounds like that of a top level executive, not a child. Where is the time for play? Or joy? Or discovery? What I have described above is without doubt hustle culture. A culture we are teaching from at least secondary school. In addition to this, parents are bombarded with text messages, changes to schedules, letters for trips, parents evenings, phone calls about home work, upcoming discussions and dealing with their child’s overload of work at home, on top of their own jobs. Teachers are constantly told that they are the difference between a student achieving or not, consistently implementing interventions, extra marking, reviewing their teacher practice and planning lessons in an already packed teaching day. For everyone involved it is as if hustle culture has gone rogue.

Cure #2: As a minimum homework has to go, and time for joy needs to increase, and have I mentioned…no exams.

Cause #3: Choosing knowledge over creativity

Cure #3: Reduce the curriculum, and allow more time for discovery, writing, journaling, art without judgement. We need an increased number of smaller schools, with less students and the ability to tailor learning to potential and purpose. Schools need to be small communities not huge buildings of hundreds of people. Oh and no exams.

We need radical change, to all of our systems

Imagine we sent out children to small schools. Where year groups were no more than 50 pupils. Where every pupils purpose and potential was known, and their talents catered for. No pressure for exams, and a team of teachers ready to support students to specialise, ready for a skills pathway when they’re 18. This may seem like a dream scenario, impossible some might say. But if we can’t dare to dream for our children what can we do?

There is a certain irony that as humans, there are many of us who are moving away from this hustle culture, yet it is a world our children still inhabit. Are we not wasting their lives, forcing them through a culture which we know is unhealthy, and will struggle to nurture their actual gifts? Should we be hoping that they eventually realise the truth and discover who they are in their 30s, praying they make it over the mountain of self doubt and criticism instilled in them in a system that is one size fits all?

We must move away from the idea that in order to fix we must add more intervention, which is so often the case. The students continue their lessons, their homework, the curriculum and the examinations, but on top of this we have to teach them how to respect their boundaries, get better sleep, and reduce their anxiety. It becomes almost laughable that governments believe this to be the solution, to teach students behaviours that they physically cannot implement due to the burden and structure of school. And as these children grow to become adults, what then? Do we have individuals who are so disaffected by learning they cannot even start, and those so driven by the hustle culture taught at school, that they eventually burnout at university or in their job, and we then tell them that is because they couldn’t manage their own behaviour?

I don’t have the answers, but I believe that as a collective we do. Even if it is just in this small corner of the internet where we share our views and our comments, begin to imagine a life better for our children, then maybe just maybe as we start to share our views with others, we can begin to shift the perception of what school should be. We have to start somewhere.

I would so love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and please do share them too. I am looking forward to this discussion.

I am writing this essay as part of the 24 essays club (this is number 18) with the wonderful Claire Venus you can read more about the essay club below.

Join our (free) Essay Club?

1. Wierenga, L., Langen, M., Ambrosino, S., van Dijk, S., Oranje, B., & Durston, S. (2014). Typical development of basal ganglia, hippocampus, amygdala and cerebellum from age 7 to 24. Neuroimage, 96, 67-72.

Andrews, J. L., Ahmed, S. P., & Blakemore, S. J. (2021). Navigating the social environment in adolescence: The role of social brain development. Biological Psychiatry, 89(2), 109-118.

Inventing ourselves: the secret life of the teenage brain by Sarah Blakemore

2. The Good Childhood Report, The Children’s Society (2024) https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-08/Good%20Childhood%20Report-Main-Report.pdf

3. NHS Digital (2023) https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2023-wave-4-follow-up

4. Number of children home schooled in England rises by more than 10,000 | Home schooling | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/29/number-of-children-home-schooled-in-england-rises-by-more-than-10000

5. Pupil absence in schools in England, Autumn and spring term 2023/24 - Explore education statistics - GOV.UK https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england

6. Teacher recruitment, training and retention - Education Committee https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmselect/cmeduc/119/report.html

7. Review-of-teacher-workload-management-approaches.pdf https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/production/documents/projects/Review-of-teacher-workload-management-approaches.pdf?v=1729787335

8. For AQA which is the most popular exam board in England.