Many teachers 'working 60-hour week'

I’m not really sure if there are professional jobs which require less than these kind of hours anymore to be honest. I don’t think its just teachers. The thought of working 9-5 five days a week is laughable for 90% of people.

Wife is a teacher, part time at the moment.

I think the hours vary significantly by subject, but timetables don’t necessarily reflect this, particularly as everyone is squeezed down to their absolute minimum timetabled prep time.

I think lousy management is a big part of it. My wife has just had her timetable tweaked so that rather the one prep period each week, she’s now got two every other week. Technically meets the criteria but is obviously completely useless for actually getting marking and prep work turned around in a reasonable time frame.

Same argument applies to holidays: yes they’re relatively long (although not work free) but you can’t do next term’s marking in them, can you?

Yep, hours are nuts

Wife was a teacher, gave up at Xmas, stopping enjoying it, shocking workload, had been teaching for over 15 years. Had dropped to 2 days per week since having kids. Went in on days off, worked every evening and on weekends

Her best friend is a teacher too, I’d guess she does 70 hours a week.

There will unfortunately be plenty of lazy teachers about doing the bare minimum, as there will be in any job, but it’s not the easy life that many people think it is

Someone mentioned about the changing curriculum, my son is in year 7 at primary school. in the 5 years he’s been there the way they are taught some aspects of maths has changed every year. Bloody bonkers.

The thought of working 9-5 five days a week is laughable for 90% of people.

No it’s not, but two points:

1) How many other professions struggle to keep people due to stress and have people quitting after 5 years despite having trained speficically for it? I know that city traders have a high burnout rate but they make huge sums of cash to compensate for it. Teaching clearly has a problem. And unlike city traders, we absolutely NEED teachers, and we absolutely NEED them to be a good job. So why shit on them so badly?

2) Is that the way we want our country to be? Stressed out and miserable?

Also the OP mentioned working practises. I’m sure a lot could be done but that would take investment.

No one mentioned the Holidays yet??

I’d guess she does 70 hours a week.

I’d guess she doesn’t actually “work” 70 hours per week.

Think about that. If she has Sunday off and does 5 hours on a Saturday, that would leave 65 hours in 5 days. That works out at about 13 hours a day working during the week. Allow 8 hours to sleep, 1/2 hour travel and 1.5 hours to eat three meals.

Doesn’t really leave anytime for getting a shower, taking a crap etc.

Working a 70 hour week is unsustainable over a long period for 95% of the population.

I have worked 70 hour weeks for short periods and it’s incredibly tough, mentally and physically.

Joe – Member

I don’t think its just teachers. The thought of working 9-5 five days a week is laughable for 90% of people.

I think probably most people that work longer hours tells themselves that it’s normal, but apparently the average full time working week is now 37.4 hours.

What’s odd is it happens even within a single team- I used to have a colleague that worked at least an hour a day more than everyone else and if challenged would insist everyone else did it it too, really weird.

The in-laws are both teachers, the father in law at a secondary and the mother in law is a primary head. The MiL works horrendous hours although she is a bit of a perfectionist and will do things to the far end of a fart but you can see how tired she is. Dealing like mentioned above with kids that are not dressed, fed, looked after properly and then there’s the idiot parents. If that’s not bad enough as a head she has to go to meetings where kids have been …. badly treated…

I’ll be honest and say I couldn’t do the job for for double the money and half the hours!

I’ve worked in schools for a while. Although theres the ‘you get 15 weeks holiday a year’, most of them will come in during that time to prepare.

In my experience they work damn hard and I’m not surprised that they work 60 hours a week.

It seems that the majority of the time is the overhead. The lesson plans mostly. The one place I worked in seemed to be too many cowboys and not enough indians. There was some sort of constant fear the teachers lived in that some senior member of staff could burst in at any point and rate a teachers lesson. It really put me off teaching.

Other things which are more important e.g. replying to parents, SNE also take up a lot of time.

too many cowboys and not enough indians

Too many chiefs not enough Indians.

It varies a lot. My workload is much lower now that I’m teaching physics, compared to when I taught ICT, because time spent marking coursework overwhelmed everything else.

It helps that we share classes, so I teach the same two lessons to five year one groups each week, and the same two lessons to three year two groups. That means I only have to prepare resources for four lessons a week – a total of only 4.5 hours worth of lesson time to sort out each week.

I also get ‘free’ time through the day, because the timetable runs from 9 to 4:10, so am not going straight from lesson-to-lesson-to-lesson as in primary and a lot of secondary.

Compared to primary, where first contact with the kids happens at 9am and there’s essentially no let up until after 3pm, sixth form teaching is super cushy.

My wife’s a primary (Head of Y4), I work in SEN and ESL and am training to be a teacher. 90% of our friends are teachers.

Teachers must be in school from 7:40 – 4:30. Most don’t work too much outside of this time. They don’t do too much outside of school. Perhaps a couple of days in a holiday and a half day in a half term.

This is at an expensive fee-paying school so whilst they don’t have waste-of-time work, they must prove to be extremely good teachers: rolling yearly contracts and most positions have 30+ applicants per position. The parents place as high demands on the education as anyone can imagine when paying the amounts they do.

ryderredman

There was some sort of constant fear the teachers lived in that some senior member of staff could burst in at any point and rate a teachers lesson. It really put me off teaching.

Without sounding like a dick, why weren’t you confident in your lessons? There are very few minutes per day where I’d be unhappy for a head to be in the room: as they are reasonably frequently for a short period.

Without sounding like a dick, why weren’t you confident in your lessons? There are very few minutes per day where I’d be unhappy for a head to be in the room: as they are reasonably frequently for a short period.

My wife has worked in a fair few schools were bulling by the senior “leadership” team was an issue. If somebody wants to, they can ALWAYS find something to criticise about your work. If its your turn to get the kicking, there’s not a lot you can do about it.

It’s the marking that seems crippling in terms of time, my sister-in-law is a secondary school English teacher and whenever they’re vising parents during school holidays she spends 2-3 hours an evening trying to get marking done (I guess reading through a lot of essays takes time but I can easily seem more technical subjects requiring a lot of time to as it’s not just about whether an answer is right or wrong). I would have thought Primary school teachers had it easier in this regard.

The hearts of the entire hospitality industry bleed for you.
😆

There are options for people who aren’t happy with their jobs. Something that some teachers, and almost all nurses (have you ever met one that’s content with their benefits?), seem to forget. But they won’t change jobs because when it comes down to the actual real facts they know they’ve got a good deal compared to many people.

There are options for people who aren’t happy with their jobs. Something that some teachers, and almost all nurses (have you ever met one that’s content with their benefits?), seem to forget. But they won’t change jobs because when it comes down to the actual real facts they know they’ve got a good deal compared to many people.

There’s a huge problem retaining teachers, and a huge problem recruiting them. So, this seems not to be true.

The hearts of the entire hospitality industry bleed for you.

People working in hospitality should retrain as teachers, clearly.

But they won’t change jobs because when it comes down to the actual real facts they know they’ve got a good deal compared to many people.

So I wonder why there is a chronic shortage of nurses and teachers?

My wife wa a primary teacher, she left due to bullying by the head but before that 60hr weeks were a minimum. Now she works a 40hr week and I have my wife back.

Having worked in a school in the past (not a teacher) and having had parents who were both teachers, I think they fall in to 2 categories.

Teachers that do it for a job (and therefore work less hours)
Teachers who do it as a vocation. (who appear to put lots of hours in to it)

Do they get different results from the kids? I bet there isn’t much in it….

Now she works a 40hr week and I have my wife back.

my wife routinely work 70-100hrs a week 🙁 (not teaching)

My wife works a 101.

What do I win?

Just because there’s a shortage doesn’t mean the job doesn’t have better benefits than most. It just means it’s hard work!

I can’t talk anyway, I’m self employed and work 24 hrs a week 9 months a year! Would I train to become a teacher?

I’m sure some are, as are some employed and self-employed people.

My GF is a Teacher and she puts the time in but she also thinks some other teachers with the correct intentions make a meal out of it, and don’t yield anything better.

Her results are up there with the best in the school.

The hearts of the entire hospitality industry bleed for you.

Yep – I’m pretty sure the stress/responsibility/workload in teaching outweighs the few late nights that barmen and waiters have to contend with.

Sounds plausible and I don’t know any teachers well.
I see one of my kids teachers morning and night on my commute, I see her near the school and I work over an hour away. so she probably does 2+ hours more than me per day, plus I get a proper lunch break.

Sack that, the money isn’t great, and dealing with other peoples kids…

My wife swapped careers into teaching and at 51 she’s now doing her NQT year.

I think a lot depends on the school and the SMT, a few examples of what my wife has experienced as an NQT in a school that is considered slightly challenging:

No NQT mentor
Only German teacher in a school with ~800 pupils
New department head with no recent secondary experience
Of the 6 teachers in languages only 1 is NOT new to the school this year
No textbooks available for German
No-one setting targets or schemes of work so ends up being the NQT

My wife leaves at 07:00 gets home at 18:00 and then does 19:00 – 23:00 every night plus at least a 12 hour day at the weekend, her line manager has just told her that she needs to do all the performance reporting despite this being something an NQT is not allowed to do! She has no existing resources because the pervious teachers deleted them all so she’s starting from scratch for everything!

I’ve worked in the advertising sector for ~30 years and even when I’ve had to work 60+ hours a week at least I was being paid a decent salary. My wife’s hours and her pay as an NQT means she’s on way below the minimum wage – even allowing for holidays (which so far she’s worked 75% of).

I’d not ever consider it as a career!

My other half has just left after a year. 60+ hrs a week, yes. Bullying head,yes. Stressful, yes. Pressure from unreasonable parents, yes. All the things others mentioned. We never saw the benefits of holidays, she worked in the Borders and our kids go to Midlothian schools and the holidays weren’t always at the same time, so she rarely got to spend time with our kids. I’ve done some work in schools, I’m spending the next three days coaching/guiding school kids and yes I’ll be getting paid to ride my bike but it’ll be exhausting, like herding cats. Looking after 30 kids and trying to teach them for about 6 hours a day is a full time job without staying on for 2 or 3 hours after the kids have gone home and then doing more when you get home.

There are options for people who aren’t happy with their jobs. Something that some teachers, and almost all nurses (have you ever met one that’s content with their benefits?), seem to forget. But they won’t change jobs because when it comes down to the actual real facts they know they’ve got a good deal compared to many people.

Having met 1000s of nurses and knowing 100s most are happy with what they have but no the longer days they put in with no breaks. Imagine not having time to post on an internet forum during work and you’re not even half way there.

However lots are leaving because conditions are and have changed the perks that once existed aren’t as great for the added work load. So they’re looking elsewhere for work where they have easier days with guaranteed breaks and finishing at a sensible time of the day.

In Scotland we have a national working time agreement of 35 hours work, with a maximum of 22.5 hours contact time. Still some of the highest contact time in any developed country.

The 35 hours thing is a bit of a joke, but it does mean that when management try and give us another time consuming thing to do I usually turn around and say ‘OK, what would you like me to do LESS of?’ I’m lucky that our union reps are pretty good at backing us up on that.

There are also a few things that OFSTED asks for that are a total waste of time. Marking jotters every 2 weeks? Lol.

Teaching is a tough job and there are days when it can totally kick your arse, but it’s fun and the holidays are awesome.

In Scotland we have a national working time agreement of 35 hours work, with a maximum of 22.5 hours contact time. Still some of the highest contact time in any developed country.

Is it the case that teachers can only teach in Scotland if they have trained in Scotland?

But they won’t change jobs because when it comes down to the actual real facts they know they’ve got a good deal compared to many people.

Even if that were true, why should we all be competing in a race to the bottom?

Current preptime in most schools is between 2 and 3 periods off per week.

Could anybody manage to do prepare 30 interactive, engaging activities to keep 30 office workers amused for 30 hours per week with only 120 minutes of preparation time, bearing in mind that all learners need to be catered for in that class.

If it’s not possible then do as many as you can and tell your head there wasn’t enough time to do them all. Is there some special process with teachers that has the word ‘no’ expunged from their vocabulary?

Is there some special process with teachers that has the word ‘no’ expunged from their vocabulary?

Pretty much, as the result is nearly always:

“I’m sorry but we’ve decided not to renew your contract for next year”

Oh, and I’ve told all the other heads/SMT in the area about you, so you’re not likely to get one with them either now, but no you couldn’t prove it if you tried…

Bullying in Schools isn’t just between the kids. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen in other professions either but in the education sector it is rife, and the pool of available jobs is smaller, and the gossip goes further.

It’s not that simple (and you haven’t included marking and then all the assessments too)

For most it’s vocational, and they take pride in their work

For primary school teachers those 30 kids are yours for a year, difficult to say don’t care about them – you’re killing yourself. I’m sure there’s something similar for secondary school teachers

Scotroutes makes a serious point, why are so many people afraid to stand up for themselves in a positive way? I don’t mean just moaning, but explaining the situation and working to resolve it.

Bullying in Schools isn’t just between the kids. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen in other professions either but in the education sector it is rife, and the pool of available jobs is smaller, and the gossip goes further.

My gf has discovered this, which is particularly galling as it turned out that the person she complained about has previous for that kind of behaviour going back years, yet she got to keep her job and my gf’s contract wasn’t renewed.

**** knows what dirt she has on the rest of the SMT!

why are so many people afraid to stand up for themselves in a positive way? I don’t mean just moaning, but explaining the situation and working to resolve it.

Performance related pay, which can only be done by value judgements. That and everyone knows the situation so explaining it to a head is pointless, they know and dont care. Teaching is bloody odd, very few heads seem to care about the shocking staff turn over rates I’m sure most see a teacher leave the job or move to the private sector with 6 or 7 years experience as a chance to save money. Also the only way to resolve work load is to employ more teachers and that needs money at a time when most schools are reducing staffing costs by doing things like cutting 6th form contact hours.

Bullying in Schools isn’t just between the kids. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen in other professions either but in the education sector it is rife, and the pool of available jobs is smaller, and the gossip goes further.

^This + Shocking nepotism which simply wouldn’t be tolerated in many other professions.