I am not sure I agree that Teachers have absolutely exhausting jobs - much more so than most jobs - as said by man on r4 this morning

[RevolutionHere]

i am not sure what my dh, former welder would make of this statement

this is an argument regarding long summer holidays,

I get verbally abused EVERY day. It’s so draining. Planning lessons that are differentiated to suit the HUGE range of needs is draining.
Marking piles of work and exams over the weekends and half term is also draining.
Just so tired.

I’ve been a primary school teacher for nearly 10 years. I’ve also had other ‘on your feet all day’, public facing jobs and have two children, one of whom woke hourly every night for the first year of his life. None of these has ever come close to the exhaustion of teaching.

It’s hard to fully express how much it takes over your life during term time. Your evenings and weekends are not your own. In 10 years of teaching I’ve socialised on a week day maybe two or three times. The idea of finishing at work and being done for the day is laughable. Your to-do list is never done, just constantly added to.

When you’re actually in the classroom you are in demand all day, you never get a moment to stop and gather yourself if something unexpected or upsetting has happened- you just have to carry on because the children are right there waiting expectantly. Presumably your welder husband doesn’t have 30 people continually asking him questions/asking for help/telling tales on others/crying because they miss mum etc etc all day every day. He can just get on with his job. Teaching is mentally exhausting and I’m sure other jobs are too but are those other jobs slated as much as ours??

I get awful chest infections and/or laryngitis every single year during term time, just from getting so drained and worn out. I think it’s quite telling that during both of my maternity leaves (so when I WAS NOT teaching) I didn’t have a single day of illness!

I don't think it's harder work than many other professions. Personality matters too. I couldn't do a hard physical labour job myself, but I could teach. Those who thrive in hard physical labour jobs probably couldn't do my job. Work is, by definition - work.

So is the entire premise of this thread that the OP doesn't know what the word "most" means?

Spent 6 years as a waitress in a busy chain restaurant before training as a teacher and I promise you teaching is 100x more exhausting!!! Yes waitressing is physically tiring and can be stressful but the responsibility is a fraction of that as a teacher, the stakes are someone getting the wrong food or at worst an allergy (but there’s so many precautions now), try and imagine the responsibilities of a teacher for not just one class but for the 6 classes I have that’s over 180 pupils!! Not just academically but also for their safety and wellbeing at all times, tracking, reporting etc. on top of that as a waitress I could go home at the end of a shift and that was it. Forget about it until the next day. As a teacher I have to constantly be weighing up and planning my decisions my lessons my planning, safeguarding or wellbeing concerns as I also have another 30 children to add to the 180, my form group for whom I’m like their ‘school parent’ and have to deliver and handle their pshe teaching. Oh now imagine ofsted is coming and I’m potentially going to have them walk in and observe me at any point over two days to assess the teaching of the whole department for that year group, followed by interrogation by said ofsted for 40 plus minutes. Honestly that’s just 2 of many reasons why teaching is massively more exhausting and stressful than waitressing couldn’t believe what I read!

I’m not a teacher but have friends that are and the one thing that I would say is how tired they are, don’t get paid overtime, work most weekends planning for the following week and also can’t ever book time off outside of the set holidays. No long weekends away and back at work Monday morning for most of the year.
Also imagine having to be with it every single day. I work in the public sector and get paid more than most teachers and I couldn’t do their job in a million years. Looking after MY child. They should be appreciated 🙌

Was a teacher and finally got out of it after over 15 years of stress, crap from children, crap from parents and crap from SLT.

Work never ended, no matter whether it was evenings, weekends or holidays. I've had jobs since and none of these workplaces have been as toxic as the schools I've worked in.

Even in the 6 weeks holidays I spent a number of weeks in school.si I don't care what people say, il always back teachers and makesure I'm not one of those pain in the arse parents to my child's teachers.

I know it's true. I also know there are lot of other jobs that are in the same position. But that doesn't make it right.

Doctors, nurses, social worker and teachers should not be getting paid less than minimum wage for he hours they worked.

Teachers certainly shouldn't have to deal with badly behaved children (and worse, badly behaved PARENTS). They should be there to teach. Children who do not not want to learn should not be in regular schools. The school rules should be vigorously enforced. We pander far too much to misbehaving kids in this country, come up with excuse after excuse for them. Then they leave school and end up jobless, often end up in jail because people have been making excuses for them their whole lives and they failed to realise that the real world doesn't work that way.

I agree, it’s depressing seeing how much of a race to the bottom people want to make it on here, instead of understanding that we are ALL having to work harder and faster with more overtime and less breaks for less spending power and job security compared to the past. All while public services and investment in infrastructure crumble. We need to stand together and support each other against the top few percent who hoard wealth and power to the point that they are destroying the economy and creating these awful working conditions for us all. I wish we could as a cohesive whole just stop falling for their divide and rule” strategies, which sadly seems to be working all too well. They wouldn’t stand for this in France! There would be literal riots over it.

For school staff the 'holidays' are unpaid leave, they are paid holiday pay that everyone is entitled to for 25/26/28 days, whichever it is.
Many people are also welcome to take unpaid leave in their jobs, however they will be fortunate to decide when to take that. School staff do not get to choose when their leave is and because of this miss out on a lot of things, never mind the extortionate holidays prices.
The job is exhausting.
However, many jobs are exhausting, but they don't seem to get bashed as much as teachers do.

A nurse, you say?

My, what a delightful attitude you display! Non-judgemental, compassionate, intelligent and open to understanding the experience of others.

At least you and your fellow nurses have time to ‘laugh your socks off’ whilst you bitch about other people. That will ease your stress a bit. Laughter IS the best medicine, isn’t it?

I once had a pupils dad offer me outside for a fight because I had given him detention for spitting on me.

I've had a parent push through the door to get to me to have a go

I've had to talk kids of the roof, report them for smashing windows and telling me to f off constantly!

The parents then made excuses that they were 'too hard to deal with'

I also had one dad try and put his hand down my top when I dropped some school work off at the kids house

We had police that visited the school often and they would say they could never work in schools because of how hard it was to deal with the behaviour

I'm not a teacher, I'm a lawyer, my husband is a teacher. His job is absolutely more exhausting than mine. Standing in an echoey classroom managing the emotions, moods, hormones of 30 teenagers going through their own stuff while trying to teach them things?

Where we live, teachers are deservedly well paid, work relatively short hours (usually out by 4pm), and have undeniably great holidays (I've never met a teacher, and I know a lot, who works more than 2-3 days of the holiday outside of their first three years of teaching). But they absolutely deserve and need this to recharge and be ready to approach their job with energy and focus.

This does lead to an interesting economic question…

UK minimum wage has increased over time at a higher rate than general wage inflation. That means that the differential between minimum wage and professional wages for public employees like nurses and teachers has narrowed. How should the government address this?

Interesting debate.

I worked in schools for 25 years and now work for a local authority supporting schools. My husband is a prison officer in a Catagory A prison. Both of our jobs are/were challenging in different ways, but interestingly he makes the comment that since leaving school I have a life, my health has improved and, in his words, I’m ‘a different person’ . Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved being in school, but, like many jobs, it is hard.

The holidays thing is always brought up. Teachers are contracted to work 195 days (1625 hours) directed time a year, 190 of those face-to-face with the children in school and 5 inset or CPD days. They are paid for the typical amount of holiday that any worker would generally get, but are not paid for 13 weeks as holiday. However, many local authorities opt to split a teacher’s pay into 12 equal payments throughout the year to support them in managing their finances. Some of the backlash more recently comes from the fact that outside of this contracted time they are still expected to plan, mark, review and prepare lessons, attend trips, additional meetings and all of the things that happen in school outside of those hours, which can easily add 20+ hours a week, or 780+ hours a year to their working hours. As a young teacher, I was blissfully unaware of this, and thought that working 12 hours a day, six days a week was just part of the job and that was what we did. I used to laugh when returning from a 7 day residential trip where I’d been on duty 24 hours a day and the parents would comment about the staff raking it in with overtime! If only, eh?! I think people are more aware of their rights now, which is why this is brought up again and again.

Personally, I think that the job is harder now, with the pressures from the government and the challenges that young people and their families are facing impacting on schools. However, I wouldn’t change my time in the classroom for the world. Yes it was hard, but I have some amazing memories, met some fabulous (and not so fabulous) teachers and had the privilege to meet and teach some incredible young people.

Wow! This is still a discussion forum isn't it? You know where people can chat about anything they want, or do we have to run it by you first? No we don't, so maybe if you don't like the topic you should move on to a different post.

It’s a chat forum, she’s using it for its intended purposes. Why are you here if not to chat.

that is rubbish

My partner is a steel worker. He's also 12 years older than me.

I'm a 50 year old primary school teacher.

He takes on all the mental load and does the vast majority of housework and cooking during term time. He also goes out in the evening during the week while I'm too tired to or am still working and he stays up later and gets up earlier than me.

Oh and he works significantly fewer hours than me. His gross pay is slightly lower than mine but he picks up more a month because he gets paid for his overtime.

If that helps.

There are jobs I think must be exhausting - teacher, nurse, doctor, farmer, cleaner, but that's probably because I can imagine what they are like. I have no idea how exhausting an engineer's job is for example. I don't know any. I have some connection to the jobs I listed above so I have some idea.

The teachers I know work very very hard and are exhausted at this time of year.

Op if it rattles you to hear other jobs as exhausting all that means is you yourself are bitter and exhausted and need a break.

@Kaggi9 - an interesting post.

Isn’t there a difference between directed and contracted time?

Teachers’ directed time is 1625 hours, but you are contracted to work as many hours as are necessary to fulfil the role.

Indeed - that additional clause in a teacher’s contract!

I used to be a primary school teacher. Absolutely loved it but I was beyond exhausted. I used to get to work for around 7, leave at around 4:45 (obviously later if there were meetings), then work in the evening - marking, prep, making resources, assessment files etc - from 7ish until whenever I finished (this was often 1am). The three half terms were write-offs as I had so much work I needed to get through during those. The three longer holidays were nice, although I maintain that it used to take nearly 2 weeks to wind down and unclench in the summer holidays, then you’d have 2-3 nice weeks before being back in school setting up for the new year. I was truly knackered and felt like I never stopped working.