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 wouldn’t call badly paid at top of scale with additional responsibility where I am although I made much more money in my business roles and with my own business. I also had much more freedom in a day and was much less exhausted. I prefer teaching but I view it as a time limited role and later I will return to easier lands. This in itself makes it more manageable. Staff around me were not having breakdowns and crisis like teachers do but were way less resilient in many ways because they were not forced to acquire enormous reserves of capacity. HR in schools is effective for sickness but ineffective at securing the employment and good treatment of good teachers.

Not only do teachers work long hours they also have no choice when they take holiday. So whilst on paper they have loads of holiday they don't get to decide when. There is no such thing as a quiet day you have to be on it all the time and if you are ill it's still easier to go in because you have to set cover otherwise. I taught until I had ds1 tried going back part time and it was a nightmare so changes to a different job for a couple of years whilst my children are little because it's too hard to jiggle around them.

Teaching contracts are advertised with an annual salary paid over 12 months and are for 195 days of work. 190 are contact days and 5 are inset days. There is a notional 35 hour week. The reality for me is that working days can be the bare minimum 8.30 until 4, or can be until 9pm if there's an event (parents evening, open evening, interviews for sixth form) of directed time and most marking and prep is done outside of school contracted hours as my day is just too full of students to do much of this in my classroom. I do teach science though so have to have my wits about me more than say an IT teacher whose students perhaps need less supervision due to safety concerns etc.

Teachers have a set number of working days, but as there is an additional BH this year, they are entitled to work one day less, just like everyone else is having an additional BH.

Its pretty rare for salaried professionals to get TOIL or paid overtime. It’s unknown in my profession.

All workers who get paid holidays are paid their salary throughout the year. If they are not expected to be working then they are being paid for holidays. This is the same for everyone - this is what paid holidays are.

Teachers don’t have any unique claim to have “earned” their time off. Many people work hard and most get far fewer paid holidays (in my profession it’s common for people to do some work on holiday as in others).

anyway as I said, good teachers are worth their weight in gold. But the job of teaching is not uniquely hard and pretending they don’t get paid holidays is just silly.

While of course that’s an issue, it’s the same for parents of school age children who have to take holidays out of term time.

That’s because those are your working days. That’s how those things are calculated. Same in any profession- unpaid time off is worked out per working day. Why would it be anything else?

@Villagewaspbyke lol it's an issue for parents for 11 years it's an issue for teachers for the whole of their career! The amount extra I have to pay for holidays really pisses me off (but that's a whole other thread)

You don’t seem to understand the concept at all despite a number of people explaining it to you.

A lot of people do think teachers get paid overtime or get TOIL, which is why I included it. Especially relevant when teachers go on school journeys involving overnight stays.

Teachers on main scale salary bands are paid for 195 days of work, the 190 days children are in school plus five inset days. As the system works it appears that teachers get paid for school holidays, but as I explained when the August payslip arrives it is covering work that has been done in the period September to July. There is no directed time allocation for the summer holidays, if there is no directed time allocation then there is no payment. In my daughters work she has the option to be paid for holiday allocation she can’t take, if she leaves her employment with holiday entitlement owing she will be paid for it.

So your OP was about the additional bank holiday, now you say it's a red herring. After several teachers answered your questions about hours and holidays etc.

So the actual point of your thread is... to tell teachers you think they work part-time when they're actually full-time?

MPs have around 80 days when they're not working at Westminster each year. They have constituency duties but, much like a teacher's non-directed time, they can spend their non-Westminster time how they like. Working, holiday, lighter duties etc. Much as a teacher can. Are MPs also part-time?

Agreed but also there are benefits too. Like longer holidays and being able to have school holidays off (if lots of parents it can be difficult in some workplaces to get any time off in school holidays never mind all of it). So swings and roundabouts

I'm England pupils have 190 teaching days a year. Teachers work 195 days in school (5 insets, though lots of schools do 4 days and split the final one into after school sessions).

Obviously this doesn't count any additional days they work running holiday revision clubs or on school trips. And mostly discounts any paperwork burden.

Teachers have 1265 hours of allowed 'directed time' a year, this is lessons, break duties, meetings, parents evenings, inset activities, etc.

Marking, planning, report writing, etc. are usually completed outside of this as the directed time usually only includes around 2.5 hours a week for planning and marking for a full time teacher.

This year the whole county gets an additional bank holiday.

Children will have 189 teaching days and teachers will work 194 days in school.

OP - why do you care so much about teachers working hours/holidays?

@Villagewaspbyke I think we'll have to agree to disagree as I've had the benefit for 7 years to not have to sort childcare versus the 10 years before having children and the 20 years I've still got to work! Less swings and roundabouts IMO