PROGRESS has been made in East Lancashire classrooms to free teachers for teaching -- but union bosses believe more still needs to be done.

A year after the launch of the Government's National Agreement on Raising Standards and Tackling Workload, teachers are starting to see a change in working practice.

The aim of last year's January agreement was to unburden teachers of "bumph" -- photocopying, chasing absences, classroom displays, meeting minutes and pupil reports -- to name but a few.

But according to the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers, more funding needs to be made available to carry on lightening the load for overstretched teaching staff.

A Local Education Authority report out today suggests that nationally 87 per cent of schools are now taking concerted action to free teachers to focus on teaching children.

Head at Gawthorpe High in Burnley, Andrew McKenzie, finished his training as a consultant leader for the workforce reforms in November.

He said: "I am well placed to see how these changes should have been implemented and support other schools with the changes.

"Things are moving in terms of changing workloads from teachers to other support staff. Here, with me being a new head, we have a good opportunity to look at the way things are run."

From last September, teachers can no longer be routinely required to undertake admin and clerical tasks. And from September this year a limit will be placed on the number of hours that a teacher can be required to cover for absent colleagues.

From September 2005, all teachers will be given guaranteed time within the school day for planning, preparation and assessment.

But Simon Jones, Blackburn with Darwen secretary for the NUT, said: "Most of teachers are saying the reforms are not making any difference. It is simply not happening in terms of reducing workload.

"The problem is in part funding -- there is not enough to pay for more admin staff when many schools in the area are facing redundancies. The other is whether teaching responsibilities should be taken over by support staff."

David Fann, council member for the NAHT, said: "There is still not enough in our budgets to employ enough admin staff, even though in general, the agreement followed our principal thinking on freeing teachers to teach.

"The main losers seem to have been the headteachers as we have still far too much stress caused by too great a workload. Four new initiatives landed on my desk in the last week of term which is just impossible to deal with."