dumb questions about teaching

[CuriousPerson]

Idly speculating, after reading schools get the extra bank holiday dates because the official one falls in half term.

I've NCd because I suspect people will think I'm starting a bunfight and I'm really not, I'm just naive. I am honestly trying to work out how the hours everyone works in different jobs compare.

So if you're a teacher your offcial working hours are the days of term time plus insets or whatever is required. Is that right? And with an expectation that marking and lesson prep and all other paperwork etc is done in your own time. Is that right? I have heard and believe in practice there are very late hours like working 7am-10pm in term and/or having to work in holidays. How many real hours would you say you have to work if you're a teacher? Is it, say, half of every one of your, what, 13 holiday weeks (2-3 days a week of any holiday week?) Is it more? Less? Is every single day in term time a 7am-10pm day, honestly, or is that, maybe half the time, otherwise a more manageable 8-4?

For comparison my office job is 8-6 with 20 days leave and usually a lot of late hours too, on average one or two really late ones per week and say one weekend day in 4. Probably works out at 43 hours a week with some weeks 50 hours and some 30. With 4 weeks hol. I and my colleagues do these same hours on salaries ranging from 27-45k. This is hard work but I don't feel massively unusual for normal professional jobs.

So teaching pay - this is the naive bit - if a job advertised in teaching at 30k, that's the total right? It's not 30k then pro rata'd down for the actual term weeks? I mean if it is then that is certainly a lot more work for less pay!

I think the answer will probably be that the hours are longer than you might think in teaching (all year!) and the pay is comparable to other professional jobs but not on the high side.

But I still suspect a full time, non teaching, hard work professional office job, with people management, constant 'on your feet' type presentation work... isnt too different as a working life. And I wonder if it's the same, less, or, more hours in the year, of a similar kind of intellectual work, and can be with comparable pay. (Obviously loads of examples of much higher pay in sectors other than teaching but for the purposes of this I'm comparing similarly paid sectors.)

If teachers are working longer hours on less pay than others then crack on with the extra bank holiday. But if they're not... why do they need an extra bank hol?

Dons tin hat !

I'm a teacher in Scotland where the workload is significantly less than in England. Our salary is around £41k at the top of the scale and in theory we have a 35 hour working week (22.5 hours teaching time and the rest for planning, marking, report writing, meetings, parents evenings etc). In practice,.most people work more than that. There are certain times of the year (August, when you get a new class, May when all the reports, tracking and other paperwork is due etc) when the workload is really high and significantly impacts your work life balance but other times when there's less to do. Most days I work 7.30-5 and I usually do around 3 hours of work on a Sunday as well. I usually only work around four days total over the summer holidays and one during the the other holidays. Honestly I don't feel that it's that different from other professional jobs, though as I said, I know the expectations in England are quite different. I'd also say that I think I'm pretty average in the amount of work I do, there are people who do a lot less and those for whom teaching is their whole life and do much much more.

When it comes to holidays it's actually for the kids that the bank holiday is replaced - they're supposed to get a certain number of school days and holidays in a year so if a bank hol falls in half term it gets moved. I think there's also something to do with pay as well - as teachers some of our days off count as holidays (I think 25?) and the rest are school closures so we're still technically entitled to the bank holidays (I'm not 100% sure about that though!)

Oh I forgot to add that our council has an asymmetric week so the kids have a.slightly longer school day Monday to Thursday and then finish at 12 on Fridays so I don't work 7.30-5 on a Friday, I usually go home at 1.30ish

How much micro managing do you have in your job? How often do you have line managers breathing down your neck, analysing and criticising everything you do? How often are you observed and graded? How often do you have to justify everything you do? It’s not just about comparing hours. What are the stress levels like in your job? How many people are desperate to leave, but are trapped?

Teachers are only paid term time only but it is spread over 12 months.

Thank you @Ca55andraMortmain that's really interesting and I hadn't considered it was about the children getting enough holiday too, and about the pay calculation. That makes sense.

@SnowdropsInSpring it sounds really stressful and horrible. I didn't want to get into the levels of stress discussion because it's so subjective - I wanted to hear about comparable pay and hours. It's not JUST about comparing pay and hours but that's the bit I know less about.

I've always wondered this too. I spend an hour commuting to work both ways. I get in for 7.30am and leave the office between 5-5.30pm. All in all I leave the house at 6.30 and get home 12hours later. I sometimes have to go in to work Saturdays too, once every other month. I'm curious as to how many hours teachers do that differs so much from all other industries...Most industries work long hours and people take work home with them.

I, and many teachers in my school, work part time so that it's possible to fit everything in. Officially I work (and get paid) for three days, but I actually work about 4.5 days a week. Plus extra when it's busy. Plus parents evenings that are on my non working days and I don't get paid any extra for

@Tinkerblonde1 I have heard this before but I don't understand it. Does that mean that if your salary is advertised as "maths teacher, 30k you get 30k/12 months or does it mean you get around £22.5/12 months ?

As if you get the advertised salary it doesn't matter what you call it?

A lot of the full time staff are wanting to be part time, generally pretty stressed too

£22.5k obviously not £22.5!

I think the fact you’re dealing with children is an important factor too. Children, whilst wonderful to teach, are incredibly draining too.

Hours, well it depends. One school I was in I had to get there for 7.30 to set up, then I was staying until 5.30 doing the fancy long winded marking. (Pointless). I had to annotate my planning and hand it in. (Took ages, and again, pointless). Tracking the children, planning intervention groups, answering emails, writing risk assessments etc etc.

The school I’m in now is an academy (I’m not currently a class teacher) and everyone seems to get everything done between 8.30 and 4.30, however the staff are deeply unhappy as they aren’t being moved up the pay scale and there’s low level bullying going on.

It's a national additional bank holiday so it's only right to give it to teachers and students too regardless of how their pay is worked out. How many hours anyone works is irrelevant, we all get it. Why should one sector miss out?

@lightswitchmoment and that's the reason why it's fair- you're right.

still interested in comparable hours and pay tho! @Howeverdoyouneedme those are long hours. But how about the 13 weeks holiday how much do you work then?

It is the advertised salary. Its not pro rata. It would be more if we scaled it up to corporate hours.
Teachers salaries are clear to see for main scale and upper pay scale with a quick google. They are as said not pro rata.

I work a 55-60 week on average in term time (7.30/7.45 am - 6.00 pm in school on weekdays, about 5 hours at the weekend and then some ad hoc time in the evening). In the summer holiday I work for approx 1 week in school and 1 week at home. In the average half term l work for about 2-3 days. I'm paid approx 38k. I have leadership responsibilities and get 2 hours a fortnight non-contact time if I'm lucky to 'complete' those tasks in school, haha. And every minute of that is resented by SLT. I have meetings until 5.00/5.30 pm two days a week. So there is no time to even make a dent in my to do list unless I work at the weekend and in the holidays.

Most schools are expected to provide a host of extra curricular activities such as D of E, school plays, sporting activities, revision classes, theatre trips etc. These cannot go ahead without staff volunteering their free time to chaperone and support. There is often a huge expectation on staff to get involved in these.
No, staff are not paid extra to go on a four day Geography Field Trip etc, etc

I think the extra day off school because the bank holiday falls in half term is specific to the Jubilee holiday. It's very common for the late May bank holiday and August bank holidays to be in the school holidays. This time, there was an announcement that there would be an extra day off for the Jubilee so as I understand it schools have been told they can decide when to take the extra day if they are on half term at the actual bank holiday. I think this is more about an extra day for the pupils than for the teachers. My DC school is taking a Friday off, with the following Monday being an inset day so that families can take a long weekend away without risking fines etc.

There are huge numbers leaving teaching and there is a worrying problem with recruitment of new teachers.
It is such a hard job. You are on show the whole time. You are in loco parentis so you cannot take your eye off safeguarding procedures. Generally, schools are seen as safe, nurturing places and that is down to school staff going above and beyond. We live constantly with drop ins, observations and the constant threat of OFSTED.
Everyone has been to school and everyone has an opinion on the running of schools. It has a huge drop out rate in the first year of teaching because it is such a hard job
www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2021/06/17/record-one-in-six-teachers-quit-after-just-a-year-in-the-classroom/?sh=1e046142272e

I think the pay is generally considered reasonable amongst my friends and colleagues. Hours - it's really hard to generalise. A brand new, full time teacher will be spending more time planning and marking typically, as you naturally get a bit quicker as you become more experienced.

Typical hours at school for me are 7.45 to 5pm but then we would have parents' evenings etc on top of that. I work 2.5 days a week by usually work 3 hours on my days off - however this means less work at the weekend. I can't work in the evenings.

For me it's the stress level that is less comparable to friends with other professional jobs. Of course in every job you could get difficult colleagues or managers and challenging tasks. I think it's managing a large group of children/teens, dealing with behaviour, parents, observations, judged on exam results that are not taking yourself, that are the challenges.

Having said that I love it despite the stress. Though we'll see if I still feel that way after this set of results!!

Work in the holidays. Well, again it depends I think on if you have moved year group or school or starting a new role (managing a subject for instance). There have been summer holidays where I haven’t had to do too much as I’m staying in the same classroom and all my planning is there. But if you’re in one of those schools that likes moving people around, you could spend quite a lot of time prepping. Remember, teachers don’t get to choose when they go on holiday. That’s restrictive in itself.

Teachers get the full salary advertised.

The pro rata is for other school staff (TA's, admin, welfare staff etc).

So as a TA you would work 40 weeks (39 school weeks plus insets), you would get paid for approx 45.8 weeks of the year. This is your 40 weeks that you work, plus 4 weeks holiday pay entitlement plus 8 days paid bank holiday. (These often fall in the holidays but given you get 12 weeks off it works out right).

Im in a favebook group full of teachers leaving teaching/just left teaching.

One of the common threads is whether people miss the summer holiday in particular and rhe reply is usually no- that having evenings and weekends being able to switch off is invaluable. And then not "needing" the holiday to crash .

Teaching the way it is now is awful and will be unsustainable. People are leaving in droves.

I had a commute of 20-30 minutes. I arrived at school at 7.15 and left between 5.00 and 5.30. During that time, there was a break of 15 minutes, but I was usually on duty and one of 30 minutes, but I opened my department to students who wanted a quiet space.

There were weekly leadership team meetings, from 3.15-6.00. There were year group meetings, subject meetings, staff meetings, parent evenings et al.

The day my grandson was born, was a Saturday. I was interrupted from my lesson planning at midday, to go to the hospital. I finished them that evening. I spent part of every holiday working and the first and last weeks of the summer break. That’s aside from something every evening and weekend.

I calculated my hours worked and realised that I was getting £10 ph.

Because a lot of our work is done outside the school day, it's hard to say what anyone's full hours are, and it will vary depending on the phase and type of teaching that you do.

At my school, contractually I had to be on site from 8:30 to 3:45 three days a week, and until 5:00 two days a week (staff meeting days). The kids were there from 9:00 until 3:15.

I used to get there at 7:30 and worked through my morning and lunch breaks (I preferred to minimise the amount of work I took home) so apart from making a coffee and going to the loo, I worked straight through from 7:30 until an average of 4:30. So a 45 hour week on site. I tried to keep evening work to a minimum, and as I didn't have a lot of marking in my role, I'd rarely do more than an hour at home l each evening.
Sunday afternoon/evening was my weekend work time, but how many hours would vary.

And yes, the number of days in school is what is proscribed for the kids. The extra BH is theirs too.

Some of the jobs Im looking at involve giving presentations or even assemblies in school. I keep getting excited that the time to plan for them is in the hours, and that there aren't 25 presentations a week that change every week! They pay less and I haven't applied for many yet as I need part time now but it will be a relief to not be panicking every night anxious for the next day.