Teaching - sticking to contract hours? Possible?

[Samboosa]

This is something I have always struggled with though many of my colleagues tell me they very rarely take work home? Wondering where I’m going wrong lol!

I find that I mark during ppa respond to emails do newsletters and admin stuff then in evening when kids are in bed, I plan for the following week and this takes forever (not the planning but the resources!) I literally spend about 3 hours 4 nights a week doing this! I do have quite a few SEN students in my class so even if I find resources I spend a lot of time adapting them.

Would be interesting to see how others go about trying to work within their contract hours, if possible.

(Ps I am a ks2 teacher)

[WarriorN]

I've never managed to! Sorry. But sen has always seemed to mean constant changes and not often I've been able to reuse planning.

And then when you seem to get a handle on it you're asked to take charge of more things that take more time...

[RuleWithAWoodenFoot]

Yes, all my time is spent on inclusion. I end up really resenting the children.

[BackforGood]

Well, contract hours are the 1265 'directed time' "plus whatever you need to do for planning, etc, to complete the work". There are no contract hours.

It will vary massively what your HT + SMT expect from you, but over 30 + years in different schools, with different HTs and different "fashions" in Education, there has always been a fairly consistent truth to the fact I've always worked 11 - 12 hours per day worked (ie 55 - 60 when I was working FT, 33 - 36 when working 3/5 of the week).
Teachers manage that differently - some working evenings, others preferring to shut themselves away for 1/2 the weekend, others doing long days in school, some doing shorter days on the premises and more in their own homes.
But I'm not sure what you mean by 'contract hours'

[Samboosa]

Interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts. By contract hours I mean from the official start and end time at school.

I did previously trial different ways eg staying on at work for an extra two hours, or working on a Sunday.

I just find it interesting that some people don’t take any work home and only work the hours at school and was wondering how people go about that.

Thanks for all your input !

[Cookiecrisps]

I think it also depends on the school. Some schools require reams of evidence and paperwork for certain things which others don’t e.g. planning in a particular written format, half termly subject leader reports, written paperwork for intervention groups etc. This also adds massively to workload.

[ValancyRedfern]

I don't know anyone who just works the school hours! I work 8 until 4.30 in school every day then all day Sunday. Lots more if I'm doing a school show. I can't work into the evenings I'm too tired.

[astuz]

I'm finding I can pretty much work contracted hours now, but I've only just got to that stage. It was the planning & making resources that took up all my time before, but I now have fully resourced lessons for every lesson I teach.

It helps that I'm a secondary chemistry teacher, and there are a shortage of them, which means I pretty much only teach chemistry. Also, I work in a really nice school, where the management see education fads for what they are, so don't waste time on them. Also, the management are not constantly doing observations.

If I was asked to teach more biology or physics, then my planning would skyrocket again until I'd planned all the lessons for those. Biology is the worst - I really don't know what I'm doing with that subject because I've never studied it past KS3.

[WarriorN]

I think it depends what you're teaching and if in primary or secondary.

I feel primary has endless changes and new requirements or new ideas or training. I did see some research into information overload in teachers once, new initiatives push out prior learning in staff.

When full time and no kids I had to work at weekends as I had two or 3 nights a week when I'd just have to go to an exercise class or yoga. At bad times it was all week and weekends. I also found I generally had to work a lot of half term hols catching up on paperwork etc. But in sen there's a lot of report writing.

I'd have had more time over the last years if my own school hadn't spent quite so much time faffing with med term planning, the formats and re writing things. We've had new slt coming in with new ideas etc.

A colleague now in low slt said to future proof any changes made to how I do things in my own subject; partly as we will be getting new slt and partly due to the way the government/ ofsted change ideas.

[echt]

The 1265 hours of directed time includes planning, etc. They can't make you work outside it. The bit about whatever else the HT wants you to do is not extra to that in terms of time you have to give, but the nature of duties, and must be contained within it it.

The upshot is that teachers work way beyond this, but in reality must be willing to say no, I've done my bit for this week. Or not say and not do it.

As a contrast, in Victoria we have a 38 hours pw contracts and while, like the UK teachers often work beyond it, we can't be made to and the weekly hours make it easier to just walk out at the end of the day. It's not some heaven here, but for instance meetings are strictly limited to timing and have to be published a year in advance. As a PT teacher I'm not liable for the full meeting. Do I walk? Yes I do.

The 1265 becomes some endless pot of time that that management draw on. Who's counting? No-one. That's how they fuck teachers over.

[HarrietDVane]

I work full time in primary and I work (in school) 7.30am-6.30pm Monday to Friday. I very rarely bring work home in the evenings midweek, as I prefer to do it at school. Weekend work varies according to workload - on a good week I might only do 2-3 hours' marking on a Sunday afternoon. On a bad week I'll do two full days, but that isn't the norm. I'm 'just' a class teacher with a subject responsibility though; not SLT or SENCO or anything fancy!

I don't know anyone who gets away with working just their 1265 hours (or part time equivalent).

[Subordinateclause]

Without meaning to be rude, I don't think responses from secondary teachers are relevant if you teach primary. The more I read The Staffroom boards, the more I think it sounds like an almost completely different job. I am very considerate of how to reduce my workload but as a KS2 teacher do considerably more hours than a secondary head of department friend, and I'm in a school with very little expectation of extra paperwork. Agree it's often the differentiation for SEN that can add up and even then I feel like I'm doing the very minimum those children deserve. I work 0.8 and do around 36-40 hours a week and a maybe 6 hours extra to that each half term holiday, plus more in the summer holiday.

[ValancyRedfern]

I think in secondary it depends very much what subject you are. I certainly work longer hours than my science and maths colleagues. For my first two years I worked 7 days a week, now down to 6 thankfully! I agree though, that primary workload seems higher in general.

[echt]

While teachers plainly work more than the 1265, the point is they don 't have to, and when challenged by SLT can say so, e.g. this deadline doesn't work for me given my other school commitments.

Do what you can and then wait until challenged.

Seriously, they'll react like salt on a slug.🧂🐌

That's a snail, but you know what I mean

[Timeturnerplease]

I do 7.30-4.30 in school, then about 7-10 five nights a week. I’m in a single form entry though, so we plan and resource everything ourselves and the more experienced of us have additional responsibilities (I have English lead, Humanities lead, mentoring lead and deputy DSL). I used to do things for these responsibilities on a Saturday morning, but since we started having children I now do them Friday night and have weekends with our toddler.

The only teacher I’ve ever heard of being able to get planning/resourcing/admin done in PPA is a colleague of mine who moved from a three form entry in London, so they split planning across the year group team, and they had phase leaders with TLRs and time out of class to do all of the subject and safeguarding stuff.