Recent reports suggest that the NUT wants to limit the hours that their members spend actually teaching children to 20 per week. In this guest blog, their General Secretary Christine Blower says the truth is a little more complex.
"Despite newspaper headlines proclaiming that lazy teachers only want to work a 20 hour week, the real story is very different.
If you know a teacher, you can probably testify to the many additional hours they work, both in school and at home. A recent TUC survey found that teachers work more unpaid hours than almost any other profession - and the DfE's own Workload Diary Survey showed both primary and secondary classroom teachers work an average of 50 hours per week, with much of that done during evenings and weekends. The long working week, and constant pressure, means that teaching consistently ranks amongst the most stressful professions - prompting many dedicated but exhausted teachers to leave.
At the NUT conference this week, teachers spoke of starting work at 8am and finishing at 5pm - but then spending another 3 hours after their suppers, on endless paperwork. Others spoke of the weariness and stress caused by having to work open-ended additional hours simply in order to get the job done - and spending little or no time with their own families, due to the all-consuming nature of their workload.
Currently, most teachers spend 20 and 25 hours actual time in front of the classroom. The NUT is now asking for that to be set at 20 hours - with further time set aside for all the other work that goes into being a teacher. But the real problem is excessive preparation, marking and bureaucracy - data collection, assessment and other administrative tasks mean that many teachers work punishing hours.
This shouldn't just be a worry to teachers and their families; it should matter to everyone. No parent wants to see their child?s teacher struggling under the relentless pressure of targets and deadlines for bureaucratic tasks. To continue to deliver a world class education service, teachers need to be able to focus on what they love most and do best: nurturing their pupils' curiosity and love of learning, so that children strive to do their very best.
Behind the headlines, the way forward is not difficult to see. Ten years ago, a 35-hour working week was introduced for teachers in Scotland - with little fuss, and through agreement by government, employers and unions. Then, all recognised that workload levels were unsustainable - and detrimental to teachers and their pupils. In England and Wales, however - and despite recent government statements about intentions to reduce bureaucracy - teachers? workload remains largely the same.
We believe the Government should put pupils and teachers first, by reducing workload and freeing teachers to teach. The NUT has been campaigning alongside the NASUWT teaching union on this issue - and we've already had a positive effect in many schools, enabling teachers to drop unnecessary tasks which distract from the core business of teaching, and learning. We hope that parents will understand and support us in this, and that they'll look past the headlines to see that this isn't about teachers 'shirking'. It's about ensuring their workload is manageable, and that they have energy for the most important bit of their job - teaching children."