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 !

*WE DON'T GET PAID FOR OUR HOLIDAYS.

It's not difficult. Every other job has paid holiday.*

Teachers DO get paid for holidays.
Their salary includes a certain number of holiday days and bank holidays, which is a legal requirement. The additional weeks when it's school holidays are non contact time, where teachers aren't teaching children in school. Some will use some of this time for working, others will choose to do longer days in term time, a few may be able to get away without doing either - personally never known this, but most MN threads throw up a minority who manage it.

Sorry just seen this - we have more
formal lengthy reading lessons every day, in which I listen to readers and teach. But the 15 mins of quiet reading I’m referring to is when the kids are coming in - they are still on staggered start times as a hangover from the covid policy, so the day doesn’t properly get started until the last one arrives.

No, we don’t have to stay in assembly. I do run assemblies - usually only one or two each term. I think the biggest benefit in my school is that we are a large three form
entry, so there are lots of staff, fantastic PPA cover teacher, part time TAs in every class, and we are also a training provider so we have excellent student teachers too. There’s a lot of adults to do things like display boards, break duty, cover you so you can go and have a wee! etc.

No- I would say ah cute…

Clearly teachers do get paid holidays and would get nowhere suing for paid holidays for those at the back of the class.

Tbh not many jobs actually require a degree and most graduate. My profession does but even those with the requisite qualifications hugely struggle to get work as it’s very competitive. So comparing the salaries to teaching wouldn’t be comparing like with like.

I get in for 7:15 and leave by 5:30/6 every evening. 10 minute break (usually moving from one room to another) and 30 minutes lunch, usually with the kids.
I don't take marking home but do planning there.
The difference with teaching is that we are on show to 30 critical audiences members all day. It's hard. I came in to teaching after a career in IT. It massively more stressful. Take today, I taught 5 sessions plus a revision lesson until 4:30. During the day I split up a fight in class between two 14 year olds - I am 5'1 and both were big, tall, strong boys. I then had to teach the class who really did not want to work. During lunch a pupil came to talk to me about an issue that led to me having to raise a safeguarding concern. During the afternoon session I dealt with a girl who felt sick, one whose period had started and another who was crying. After my revision session I spent an hour with a pupil who has recently lost a parent and wanted to talk.
Pretty standard day to be fair. The teaching and planning is a small part of it. I am home now but can't relax as thinking about the two children who needed my time today as they had nobody else.

I think the actual job itself can be done the way you describe and I applaud anyone who can work like you do. You've got it right.

I honestly think a good 50% of our ''workload" is actually stuff that isn't important at all and doesn't benefit the children. The unfortunate problem is that we're led to believe it is important by misinformed SLT and as a result we invest the time thinking we'd be failing the children if we didn't.

Having a child and going part time has made me realise this - I often have to dash straight after school to pick up my DD from nursery. If I don't have time to do something as a result it simply doesn't get done. Tough shit. The kids still seem to be making progress, funnily enough.

For context, it was my jubilee bank holiday today and I spent it writing reports. I love my job but it is like running non stop on a hamster wheel for 6 or 7 weeks and then crashing with just enough recovery time before the wheel starts spinning again. My DH is a secondary teacher and works far longer hours than I do. In fact he's not home yet as he drives the minibus to allow pupils to attend a specialist facility for a club.

You're the one being ridiculous and mentioning suing for not having holidays. Teachers have time off work, yes. But contracts are x hours a year with a maximum amount of days and then pay is spread out over the 12 months. So technically no they aren't paid for holidays in the traditional sense, but of course do 'agree' to a wage and have time off so the end result is the same. Let's hope you don't know anything about contracts for those in the armed forces as your mind will well and truly be blown.

That sounds like you have a lot of additional responsibilities! Would your SLT be open to discussions about workload? Ours are very concerned about that and even gave us a few extra days off at Xmas to thank us for the extra work we did over lockdown! I’m not making this up! We are a real state primary! They’ve also signed us all up to a private health advisor for things like counselling, stress reduction etc.

Thank you, I know my school is brilliant, and I absolutely love my job to bits. I really hope my school is setting an example and is the way other schools will follow. I think it’s important that I am vocal on this topic - because hopefully other schools’ SLT will listen up and follow suit.

Good luck to you too 😊

Sometimes I do wonder if some people are planted just to stir these arguments up/keep them going. Not sure why though.

Attrition rate is hideous in teaching. I've sat in a meeting where a governor has admitted to taking on NQTs because they're cheap...

And I can believe some teachers don't do all the extra prep - the Michaela school is one of the strict teach-by-numbers schools and there are others like it where all the powerpoints are predone, they don't believe in marking/ kids do lots of self quizzing/tests / detentions but there isn't the normal type of homework. I imagine there is less working hours. But less of the magic too maybe.

@Disneyblueeyes

“I honestly think a good 50% of our ''workload" is actually stuff that isn't important at all and doesn't benefit the children.”

I 100% agree with this and it is a big reason I have a manageable workload.

You have a manageable workload because you have a supportive SLT and the school has funding for enough support staff it sounds like that you aren't plugging the gaps. It is sadly very much not the case for most schools, it should be but don't think others are choosing to burden themselves with lots of the additional stuff unnecessarily. Sure some do, the minority in my experience.

Budget, @DogsAndGin . We can't even get time off for funerals unless it's immediate family, never mind get extra days. Anyway, I'm in my 40th year and it's a bit better, because in the early days we had to cover for absent colleagues, so lost most of our non contact. I find 2 hours a week generous in comparison!

Some of the stuff I read on here or on Facebook groups really shocks me. I follow a guy called Mr P does ICT as well and he talks alot about it.
Alot of schools put ridiculous expectations on teachers and basically set them up to fail.
It is a real problem because schools like yours (and mine actually), are few and far between which should not be the case.
We're actually paid quite well for the job itself. It's the extra crap thrown on teachers which makes it less worth it and causing a lot of teachers to leave.

Perhaps teachers ARE choosing to burden themselves by simply not standing up for themselves and saying no to unreasonable demands.

I know, it's not easy and many would literally lose their jobs if they did.
It's shocking to say the least.

Having time you don’t work for and still get paid is what paid holidays are. So clearly the claims that they don’t get paid holidays are false. They are paid for holidays just like everyone else (actually they get waaay more holidays than average).

of course teaching can be hard and good teachers are worth their weight in gold. But making silly claims like no paid holidays does no one any favours.

Also many jobs are hard and have long hours. Teaching is not uniquely hard unlike what a few claim on mn.

It’s because people bang on about 13 weeks holiday ( incidentally UK schools have longer terms/ shorter holidays than many other countries but we will let that one go). Teachers also miss out on Bank holidays, apart from one every 70 years.

Class teachers have contractual hours - slightly different for Senior management- which are the hours they work and are paid for , those contractual hours , which are called directed time, fall within term times which makes sense as , well you know, having to teach children and all .

Teachers are paid a salary which covers the directed time they work, plus any enhancements because of additional responsibility/experience. And although many teachers work longer than their directed time they aren’t paid overtime, or given TOIL. They are paid their agreed salary which for administrative reasons is split into 12 monthly payments.

So for example, the salary paid at the end of August, when teachers and students have been visibly on holiday for some weeks is not a payment for dossing about doing nothing, it is a 12 th part of the salary earned for teaching the school year which as we all know covers September to July. The teachers getting their August salary paid into their bank accounts while lounging in their back garden sipping cider have already earned it.

It’s not the hours, for me, although they are significant. It’s the intensity of dealing with 6 groups of 30, often highly volatile, individuals each day. I have one class that completely exhaust me - they work hard and are super, but the effort to keep them all on track, focused, working, not killing each other is tremendous....but if you came into the room you wouldn’t even notice what I was doing to keep them in line. It is intense, exhausting work and nothing to do with whether I do work in the holidays or at 11pm every night. More people should try it in order to fully understand it.

I'm an ex teacher, now do supply, quit when I had my kids almost entirely because of the working hours.
My usual hours were 8am til 6pm in school 5 days a week, 38 weeks a year. Virtually no breaks, either no lunch or lunch at my desk. Often had lunch while working, after the kids have gone home, so a 4pm lunch. Often same for using the toilet.
I would also usually do 2hrs work every evening Mon-Thurs. So that would be 12hr days 4 days a week, one 10hr day and then around 5hrs on the weekend. So around 60-70hrs a week for 38 weeks a year.
1 week of insets, usually half 8 til 4.
Work around half of all holidays. A few days each half term. A week ish over Easter and Christmas. Around 2 weeks of the summer. These days are usually about 6hr days each time. Probably 30 days work out of the unpaid holidays, at 6hrs a day.
Per year, it's around 2700hrs work.
A normal 40hr week job would have less than 2000hrs a year, so overall, I felt over worked and underpaid.
I think something that people don't realise about teachers is that we aren't paid for the holidays,so we don't get 13 weeks paid holiday a year, they are unpaid time off. And obviously there is a real lack of flexibility over when we can take that unpaid time off too.

I'm sorry to keep on with the 😯 at your school, but I need to know things! It sounds like your SLT have their heads screwed on so I'd love to know more in case I can help my own working day!!

1. You spend 20 minutes marking/printing after your class have arrived. What are the class doing?

1. 15 minutes of reading time to do more marking/planning - when does this happen?

1. How did your school give you "a few extra days off at Christmas"? State schools legally cannot just decide to close the school for a couple of extra days. Do you mean they chose to use INSET days as "days off" under the guise of staff using them to work?

1. Do you not have children that you could be doing small group work with during assembly time? I'm interested that your SLT have decided to give that time as extra PPA, rather than time to work with children. Do you have an assembly every day?

I never get tired of finding how other schools do things differently! I do supply part-time, and going in to different schools is incredibly interesting. I've yet to find somewhere that has it 100% right, though!

I'm really not a plant to stir up anti teacher vitriol! I wouldn't dream of saying they don't work hard or don't deserve the holiday. If it really is 2700 hours per year as against 2600 (a 50 hour week, not uncommon in corporate jobs) that's a lot.

But I still don't agree you're not paid for the holidays. You're paid to do your job which is a term time contact time and non contact time job (I have just learned!). If I work part time three days a week, I don't say I'm not paid for Fridays. I'm paid a yearly salary for a role that the market thinks is worth that salary.

Agree that saying oooh they have long holidays, get back to work, is unfair as i see the long hours worked.

However where I started this was thinking why does someone who works essentially part time and is on holiday already get the extra bank hol. Maybe every part time job should have it pro rated but I've worked jobs where I didn't work Mondays and just used to ignore them as i was off anyway.

Im glad you now realise teachers don't work part time! It is a bizarre misconception. I guess it comes from having been kids in school and not realising all the extra hours that goes into preparing lessons/marking etc.

I do think many people are a bit ignorant (hemce why teachers are vocal in response) in a way they aren't around other professions.

Why should anyone be entitled to an extra day off?

Someone high up somewhere decided it would be nice and someone else high up decided it would be nice to extend it to teachers and pupils. They could have put it anywhere in the year, the jubilee happens to fall in half-term so they made a decision about schools.

It seems a bit mean to be so disgruntled by it!

(And I work part-time, so I've only technically had part of a day off as it's pro-rata.)

WE DON'T GET PAID FOR OUR HOLIDAYS.It's not difficult. Every other job has paid holiday.
Every other job gets an annual salary divided by 12 and paid monthly. Paid the same irrespective of whether on annual leave or not.
I do think this constant complaint of not being paid for holidays does no favours for teachers.

I posted upthread about one of my DC who is a secondary / sixth form teacher so I fully agree with the intensity of the work and the hours. He also loves his job passionately. My other DC earns more, works strictly 9 to 5, never gives a second thought to work outside of those hours and is bored and unstimulated.

Haven't rtft but having been a teacher for ten years and recently left for an office job with much longer hours required in the workplace itself, I can hand on heart say I am NEVER going back to teaching. Office work us about a hundred times less draining and until you've actually been a teacher you cannot make that judgement. If you think it's easy the uk would benefit from your training to become a teacher as we're heading for a massive recruitment crisis due to to awful working conditions. The amount of job offers I get from agencies every day is insane, and yet I gave chosen to take a pay cut because this job doesn't make me mentally ill like teaching did. Anyone still left in the teaching profession deserves more than one measly bank holiday, trust me.