Many teachers 'working 60-hour week'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-3758598

Does lesson planning, marking and admin really take all this time?
As a parent of primary and secondary school kids, my experience of lesson planning (or at least home work planning) is to provide a page of questions from an online resource (usually badly photocopied).

Is this stuff really taking so long, or is it a case of a need for better resources and smarter ways of working?

We surely can’t go on like this.

My brother who is a maths teacher, doesn’t work those hours. He probably did those kind of hours for the first 2 or 3 years, and he still works hard, but he isn’t working anywhere near 60 hour weeks.

ps. your link isn’t working

in my experience (wife is a secondary language teacher), yes. Maybe not 60 hours a week, but she’s commonly at school from 8-6, 5 hours one weekend plus the occasional parents evening etc. i make that 55-60 hours a week.

things appear to take less time as she gets more experienced, but overall people are flooding out of the profession due to relatively poor pay and relatively long hours

60 is an underestimate..

my other half teaches secondary gcse and sixth form, a-level. she leaves the house just after 7, she’s home around 5-530 and mon-thurs 6-10 does marking/planning etc apart from time making dinner half the week. and then, sundays 11-6 too. (while i’m out riding!)

its a case of, they don’t give timetabled time for that stuff – if they’re teaching the whole time they’re there – then the stuff has to be done elsewhere.

the resources are supposed to be made by the teachers, my mrs makes then, and has even sold them to a site that sells them. (so they can be bought!). however i know some lazy teachers just print out the same stuff, or use other teachers resources.. their results show it!

things like curriculum changes mean the resources are always needing improvement.

not all teachers have as many classes, especially subjects that are not ‘core’ ones (in my o/h’s case its a core one, english lang and lit). my o/h also does another role.

..and people without a clue get bitter about their holidays! some of which are also spent marking, planning etc

When my mother retired as a head of a rural first school I reckon she was probably doing more, planning, teaching and running a small business effectivly.

In a different system I know an Austrlian teacher who is only working 3 1/2 days relief cover at the moment so is only averaging about 45-50hrs I reckon.

Is this stuff really taking so long, or is it a case of a need for better resources and smarter ways of working?

I think the general problem is so much change in the curriculum/methods/fashion from above and pressure from parents that the job is just about unworkable.

As a parent of primary and secondary school kids, my experience of lesson planning (or at least home work planning) is to provide a page of questions from an online resource (usually badly photocopied).

Hint the lesson planning is what the kids see in the classroom so probably 6-8 plans per day? Depends how the kids are going to so maybe not all was covered one lesson so the plans keep changing. Now take that 1 page of homework and multiply it by 30 kids to mark. Then by however many lessons you give work for etc. then the other stuff like managent and school planning that goes on in parallel. Chuck in dealing with the problem kids and kids problems and it’s all adding up.

As someone with a good friend who’s a teacher I do have a clue as far as holidays are concerned, and when they are taken into consideration I would argue that on average teachers do less hours per year than someone working 40 hours a week with 3 weeks annual holiday.

Lesson planning can take ages. The outsider thinks it’s 1 lesson; in reality it could be up to 30 different lessons depending on the ability spread of that class. If you’ve got 5-7 lessons per day that’s quite a lot of work. Add on marking time, report writing and sorting out random stuff which crops up during the day and the time soon adds up

I’d like to add that there’s no way I’d do it as a job, regardless of how many hours are involved. Kudos to anyone who can put up with the constantly moving goalposts and dealing with some of the little darlings.

Statutory minimum holiday is 28days inc bank hols though, nearly double 3 weeks!

I’d say I do around 50-55.

would argue that on average teachers do less hours per year than someone working 40 hours a week with 3 weeks annual holiday.

Which is a fair point, but it doesnt help solve the massive teacher shortage we have.

The preparation and marking of lessons takes a real chunk of time – as above, the spread of abilities can really add to this.

I would also say teachers are often expected to do lots of admin that smarter working, simple IT or not doing some of the things ‘expected’ would save lots. As an example in the UK now you only need annual permissions and risk assessments for most local and simple school trips – yet the majority of heads still insist on a teacher re-writing a risk assessment and collating thirty permission forms from parents each time.

For me, teachers pay has not really ever been an issue – the working conditions and time are. When you have a class, few jobs are as intense.

the spread of abilities can really add to this.

There is a solution….

its called differentiation, that is. tailoring resources to meet ALL the classes needs in a mixed ability group.

but yeah.. grammar schools, or top / middle / bottom sets like the olden days.

Statutory minimum holiday is 28days inc bank hols though, nearly double 3 weeks!

I don’t think his friend is a maths teacher.

It’s easy to think they have it easy, there’s a couple in my street who teach they work at the local school. They come home at lunchtime and go for a run, well he doesn’t these days, they don’t leave until about 8.30 most mornings. But what I don’t see is what they do at school, what they do at home.

People think I’m always off as they see me during the day, they forget I may have been at work overnight and only up to walk the dog. They also forget that I work at least 12 hour shifts so work less days per week.

I thought I worked hard as a state school teacher until I moved to an independent boarding school. Now I look back at those days fondly in terms of hours worked! It’s probably the boarding aspect where I work that makes a difference but to put it into context lessons don’t finish until 5.30 and even those who live off site and have nothing to do with running boarding houses are still contractually obliged to be running activities and attending assemblies until either 7.30pm or 8.30pm every night depending on the day of the week and teach until lunchtime on a Saturday too.

Probably about right. My wife has gone part-time (half day per week) because full-time was slowly killing her.

But she’d be in school at 7am, and marking most evenings. And that’s just for year 1.

doesnt help solve the massive teacher shortage we have.

Bullying / overbearing head teachers…

Mrs rkk01 took a “break” from teaching at Easter (to supervise her ailing parents house move). Now, having stepped away for 6 months she can see the toll it was taking on her health and doesn’t want to go back.

Main problem is target driven culture and target obsessed heads. No concept of H&S or staff welfare in the school system. As a manager in a technical consultancy I would’ve been dismissed for what passes as “normal” behaviour in schools 🙁

People think I’m always off as they see me during the day, they forget I may have been at work overnight and only up to walk the dog. They also forget that I work at least 12 hour shifts so work less days per week.

I get that a lot but people just tend to ask ” keeping busy ” well yeah, just because I’m out with the Dog at 9 am Monday morning doesn’t mean I’m not busy or I’m a lazy so and so, it’s just that I’m finishing tonight at 9pm so I’m not starting till lunch.

As an outsider, going into schools one day a week, it looks like a brilliant profession, but all the above posts would put me off attempting to be a school teacher.

Sounds about right. My wife is in school at 7:30am most days and leave around 5pm. She rarely takes lunch for more than 10 mins. This week she has various observations and other such fun so was working all day Sunday, most weekends it’s “only” a half day Sunday. Yes, the holidays are good but she’ll spend a minimum of 1 week in each big break working and a day or 2 each half term. She’s new new to this either, 8 years a teacher, and she’s now the one who the head sends in to sort out problems so she knows what she’s doing. You can do less mind you, but then you end up writing the kind of lesson my wife has to fix.

For me, teachers pay has not really ever been an issue – the working
conditions and time are. When you have a class, few jobs are as intense.

This is spot on. The pay is not bad at all but the stress, the hours, the expectations and the constant political football are a bigger challenge.

My Mum and Dad were both teachers, my sister and brother in law are both teachers. He said that the hardest thing for him was that you’re always performing in front of a class. Dealing with a live situation under pressure from kids asking questions and so on – and on top of that dealing with kids who just want to dick around and spoil everything. You have no time to coast.

I go to stressful client meetings and get grilled sometimes, but most of the time the people aren’t naughty, they don’t fight, chat, pass notes, and they listen. But mostly when it finishes I can go back to my desk, hide in front of a computer and chill a bit, de-stress on here or even chat with colleages. Can’t do that as a teacher.

So it might be short days at work but they are very intensive. Then you have to bring work home every night. I work late sometimes, but there are light days to compensate for it.

Knowing how hard they work – I wouldn’t want to. Non-teachers like to go on about the long holidays, but they are clearly not enough compensation, because there aren’t enough teachers and those who invest time in training keep quitting.

Main problem is target driven culture and target obsessed heads.

Only some heads are like that, the good ones often aren’t. But they’re rarer than you’d think and also tend to me hiding a the ropey, horrible schools that need sorting out and that no-one wants to teach at.

The hours they work, though not irrelevant, is not really the issue. When I was a butcher, I often did over 55 hours. I work in children’s homes now and being at work less than 55 hours in a week is a distant dream. Lots of us work bloody long hours, many for minimum wage. The main problem in the teaching profession is not hours or pay, it’s the increasingly Kafkaesque political meddling. Imagine working for a company where the boss kept doing total 180’s on decisions, then other company’s bosses came in, stole loads of the money, then blamed you for loss of profits. Then your boss gets sacked and replaced by a guy who thinks steam engines are the future of industry and expects you to shovel coal, all the while complaining that the steam engine would be amazing if only you would shovel coal better. That’s our education system and I think 20 hours a week in that would be too much.

My work life hours are much better now that my subject hours are less. The preparation takes time but don’t forget the marking. Any work set has to be meaningfully marked.

I now spend half my time in behavioural support and although it’s pretty brutal what some kids do its not half as bad as their home life.

Wait till you see the hours a front line child protection social worker puts in!

If our kids were any more neglected, I’d report my wife to social services…..

All public sector jobs are having to be done with fewer people and resources, and more bureaucratic oversight. It will get worse. Standards in education will struggle, kids in the care system will die.

My Mum and Dad were both teachers, my sister and brother in law are both teachers. He said that the hardest thing for him was that you’re always performing in front of a class. Dealing with a live situation under pressure from kids asking questions and so on – and on top of that dealing with kids who just want to dick around and spoil everything. You have no time to coast.

Apart from the dicking around bit, isnt that part of the motivation for being a teacher?

Why would you want to coast?

I quit full time teaching because of the hours. I wasn’t prepared to put in what the job deserved.
On the whole I would say that 60 is there abouts.
It could be done with less but to do so needs a relatively easy job. They all vary like most jobs. 8 til 4 makes 4 hours a week and I doubt many teachers are that lucky all the time. Making p the other 20 in evenings and weekends sounds about right.
Sadly there is little understanding by outsiders of what the job entails. Like many other jobs of course. My wife as a relatively senior social worker could easily exceed 60 hours if she could do more out of office hours.
Its not so much the matter of resources or efficiency so much as what has to be done. Marking! At primary level maybe you might have to read a piece of writing, if you can, Write a couple of sentences for the kids, all of which have to reflect the objective of the lesson, how well its been addressed and what specific to that child action is needed next. Not every piece, every day but enough to add up. As an example on Friday I did just that to 28 books from a class of 8/9 year olds. Took me 30 minutes and that was being rather general and not especially detailed.
Sadly it is a profession where by the powers that be have decided that the goal posts need moving every year. More is added except time. Some years ago primary schools were told to teach a modern language. Great idea but where did that half an hour a week come from? No where.
I don’t doubt that some teachers do more than others, the same as any job.
To the person who suggested that homework is just a printed worksheet. It probably is but even finding and printing that took half an hour (by the time it was differentiated, printed, and handed out). It was probably done that way because that’s the best way of getting most of it back. Hand out an exercise book and 25% will be lost in the first month. Parents may be too lazy to help or believe that homework is wrong or the computer at home will be too busy playing games or something. Of course it would be nice to hand out homework according to parental interest, resources at home and hours missed by the kids being at a child minders but that doesn’t work either does it?
You can’t win.

“aren’t enough teachers and those who invest time in training keep quitting.”
That’s a good point.
If a job can’t keep the good people something is wrong. Money, conditions, status, public attitude?

I keep hearing “5 years” – as a typical timescale where even the good / capable are worn down, burnt out and looking for something different

ETA – there’s no proper “market” in teachers… i.e. one that encourages career development & progression. mrs rkk01 had a very demanding (and skilled) role, specialising in observation and assessment of kids that would not cope in mainstream classes – behavioural difficulties, ADHD, autistic spectrum, health /development probs etc. The “price” driven market sees a lot of specialist SEN roles being offered to cheap NQTs who have neither the skills or emotional experience for the role, rather than a “skills” driven market where those who can make the most difference command the higher salaries…

Apart from the dicking around bit, isnt that part of the motivation for being a teacher?

I’d imagine the motiviation is wanting to do good through education, not specifically wanting a job that doesn’t allow you to rest.

Why would you want to coast?

Same reason you do on a bike – to get your breath back. I certainly do my own job like that – high intensity followed by lower intensity. Works well for me. And as you know I post on here a lot, it helps me deal with the day. Would be a lot harder for me if I couldn’t.

Many of the extra hours are down to poor management from above- especially with unrealistic and unsustainable ‘marking cycles’ where you have to mark books every two weeks. That puts real strain upon teachers’ time.

New methods of assessment & accountability are probably the biggest drain on my time.

The one thing that I think is always unfairly blamed for workload etc. is Ofsted.

My wife is a secondary school teacher.
She teaches Science but is has recently become the school SENCo (Special needs co-ordinator)
She is normally in school from 8am to 5pm, and will do 2-3 hours each evening, and a fair bit at weekends.
She made the jump to SENCo as she can’t see herself being in charge of 30 teenagers with Bunsen burners when she’s in her 50’s/60’s.

The statement below sums it up – along with target driven heads and the constant fear of OFSTED.

For me, teachers pay has not really ever been an issue – the working
conditions and time are. When you have a class, few jobs are as intense.

This is spot on. The pay is not bad at all but the stress, the hours, the expectations and the constant political football are a bigger challenge.

I’d say she does at least 60 hours most weeks.
She spend Saturday at a trade show as work wouldn’t let her go during the week – if I did that I’d get a TOIL day.

Whereas I don’t do much over 40 hours a week (travel a bit so they get a bit more out of me some weeks) get a car/healthcare/phone/laptop/etc as part of my job, and earn 20% more than she does.

I wouldn’t do it – not because of the pay (which is reasonable) but because of the ridiculous pressure brought on by heads terrified of OFSTED.

The one thing that I think is always unfairly blamed for workload etc. is Ofsted.

I think OFSTED are the root cause of a lot of it – You only get 24/48 hours notice of an OFSTED inspection, so schools are often on permanent ‘red alert’ when they think they might be due.
Last place my wife worked were even paying consultants to carry out ‘Mock-Sted’ inspections, just to get the staff ready.
Madness.

Teaching, like the NHS, is now just a political toy. Constant meddling since the late 80’s, league tables, accountability, one size fits all, has only served to degrade the system rather than improve it. My wife is a teacher, has been for 15 years, at a “good school”, but her workload has never lessened with experience, and 60 hours a week is the norm, not including weekends.

13 weeks holiday? I can’t tell you that she’s ever had a school holiday where she hasn’t needed to work. In summer she has maybe 3 weeks to herself when we go on holiday, Christmas maybe a week. The rest she is working. But very little of that time is for the benefit of the kids she teaches, rather it justifies (or not) the political motivations of the DfE. Stop meddling, start trusting.

13 weeks holiday? I can’t tell you that she’s ever had a school holiday where she hasn’t needed to work.

Hahaha! – agreed – even when she’s not at school there are constant emails from management who appear to work every holiday.
The last place she worked also ran GCSE revision classes during the Easter holidays (which they charged the kids to attend) teachers were expected to do at least one day – for £100 per day.
Sounds good until you factor in putting our own kids in childcare (@£70 per day for both of them) so Mummy can go to work in the school hols.

Teaching, like the NHS, is now just a political toy.

There’s a common theme here

OFSTED – spit – my SIL who is a HM always complains about OFSTED. But why? Why the mad panic to create a false impression. Why doesn’t OFSTED do blind inspections so that they can see schools on normal days instead of the sanitised version? Isnt that what parents should know ie, what their children are going to experience on a day to day basis?

What is there to fear from random inspections?

My wife is a primary teacher and I’d agree with the above that it’s probably an underestimate. As already described the lesson planning takes the most time – a mixed year group with a truly massive spread of ability so differentiation is the main cause.

Around 60% of the children there are on the special needs register, which is way above the national average; most of these kids arrive at school late, unfed, not dressed properly, tired; whereas the parents see the school as free baby sitting for the day.

The teachers have to deal with an ever changing curriculum; gone are the days that they could use last year’s planning.

My wife gets up at about 6am & squeezes some marking /planning in before our kids awake. She has to be at work for 8.15 and leaves at 16.45 most days. She has a staff meeting midweek that ends at 17.30 and does an after school club until 18.00 on one of the days. She will then set off from work, pick our kids up from the child-minder, and take them to their after school clubs. She generally gets home between 18.30 & 19.00 hours. I do all the cooking so dinner is normally ready & waiting either to warm up or on the table if I’m not at work myself. She then starts her marking/planning.

She rarely gets to bed before 23.00 because of this.

She has to put up with verbal abuse from parents and children on a daily basis; she has been assaulted on numerous occasions; she has to dress and feed children (often out of her own pocket). Her job is all consuming and I wouldn’t do it for all the money in the world. Most of the new teachers they get leave the profession with a couple of years and the government have virtually destroyed their pension provision – the sweetener that kept people going.

My mum was a teacher untill she retired a few years ago, as is my best mate. None came close to working 60 hours a week, more like 45 tops in their exp.

Both were reasonably successful to, so not just bumming by on the minimum they could get away with.

Maybe the schools where these people work are really bad, but i cant help but think theres an element of exageration in there, or perhaps bad time management.

Either way i’m sure its a professon with positives and negatives just like any other job, its just that (as with all public sector workers) they are more vocal than those in the private sector, who simply put up with getting shafted regularly by their employer.

OFSTED – spit – my SIL who is a HM always complains about OFSTED. But why? Why the mad panic to create a false impression. Why doesn’t OFSTED do blind inspections so that they can see schools on normal days instead of the sanitised version? Isnt that what parents should know ie, what their children are going to experience on a day to day basis?
What is there to fear from random inspections?

In my experience, although they know when an inspection is due (that is, which year), they get a day’s notice – trying creating a false impression when you find out they’re coming tomorrow.

Does lesson planning, marking and admin really take all this time?

Other half is a teacher, working three days a week – usually 11 hours per day, plus some time at the weekend.

Yes, it does. In primary there are learning targets to hit in each session (bearing in mind a session can last just 10 minutes) and overall targets to hit at the end of the year; my outside view is it’s incredibly complex. And this gets changed sporadically, and almost definitely on an annual basis.

I asked a friend who’s a subject head at a decent comp how he deals with the moving goalposts of the changing curriculum. He replied “they don’t move the goalposts, they take the entire pitch and hide it in a wood”.

It seems to be a constant that each head of education wants to ‘change things for the better’, which essentially means just change; but it always is change, as opposed to refining or evolving what’s already in place. Seeing as there’s been a quick succession of education ministers over the past few years it’s arguably in an even more turbulent state than usual.

Why the mad panic to create a false impression.

As I understand it from my wife – the two main reasons a Head Teacher can be dismissed with immediate effect are child protection failures, and failing an OFSTED.

If my £80k – £100k job hung on a satisfactory OFSTED inspection I’d be pretty stressed aswell.

A lot of pressure comes from heads whose pay is dependent on results. Check the school’s accounts at companies house, two thirds of the way down you get the head’s salary. On becoming an academy the head where I was working doubled her pay to £150k, that’s where a lot of the bullying comes from.