Synopsis
Leon Furze dismantles recent headlines claiming AI can “save teachers six weeks a year.” He shows how time‑saved tallies in the Walton Foundation/Gallup survey and Microsoft’s Copilot pilot gloss over what tasks are being sped up—and why they exist in the first place. Measuring efficiency, he argues, ignores the deeper causes of burnout: relentless compliance work, eroded autonomy and a culture that treats teaching as piece‑work.

Instead of counting hours shaved off reporting or email, Furze proposes judging AI by whether it helps redesign realistic workloads, hand genuine professional agency back to educators, keep work meaningful, boost self‑efficacy, build supportive staff cultures and replace punitive accountability with trust. Until those metrics guide policy and product design, “time saved” is the wrong conversation.

Originally published at: https://leonfurze.com/2025/06/30/time-saved-is-the-wrong-measurement-for-teacher-workload-and-ai/

Links
https://leonfurze.com/2025/06/30/time-saved-is-the-wrong-measurement-for-teacher-workload-and-ai/
https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/the-ai-dividend-new-survey-shows-ai-is-helping-teachers-reclaim-valuable-time
https://marcwatkins.substack.com/p/who-owns-the-ai-dividend
https://www.microsoft.com/en/customers/story/23838-brisbane-catholic-education-microsoft-365-copilot-chat
https://leonfurze.com/2024/03/21/artificial-intelligence-and-teacher-workload-can-ai-actually-save-educators-time/
https://leonfurze.com/2024/08/16/low-hanging-fruit-why-ai-lesson-planning-wont-solve-teacher-workload/
https://leonfurze.com/2025/07/07/beyond-time-saving-how-genai-might-actually-help-teacher-workload/

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