EDUCATION Secretary Nicky Morgan listened to teachers’ concerns about increasing workloads and changing national demands when she visited Ilkley Grammar School.

Ms Morgan heard Ilkley teachers talk about workloads, and negative perceptions of education nationally.

New head teacher, Helen Williams, made a plea for the Government to make “no more changes” to education, giving schools a period to adjust to reforms of recent years. In a question and answer session with teachers, Ilkley Grammar’s head of design technology, James Kerry, told Ms Morgan he knew of teachers who felt “demoralised and overwhelmed” with the combined effect of workload and negative judgement publicly.

Drama teacher, Jess Watson, told how administrative work required to be carried out by teachers accounted for much of her workload.

Ms Morgan spoke in favour of a “school-led self-improving system”, equality in access to good education regardless of background, and the belief that education can be transforming.

“This is what we want to see in education,” she added. “We believe academies are a good way to do that.”

She agreed that schools were an important area to teach community values.

Ms Morgan told The Gazette the Government would not push schools into becoming academies, but believed the creation of academies could increase standards.

The visit last Thursday also gave Ms Morgan a chance to see first hand the difficulties encountered by staff and pupils at the successful Ilkley school every day, trekking between numerous buildings spread across the steeply sloping site. Ms Morgan’s predecessor, Micheal Gove, who visited Ilkley Grammar in 2011, before the school gained academy status, scrapped the Building Schools for the Future Scheme, which it had been hoped would fund the rebuilding of the oversubscribed Ilkley school.