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,

@Goldenmemories i didnt call teachers lazy

Perhaps if we appreciated teachers more, behaviour wouldn't be so appalling in schools right now.

Teachers don’t get really long holidays. When do you think we do all the planning for lessons and curriculum? As well as the marking and resources creation? It’s not when we’re teaching full days! In an average week you maybe get 2-3 hours planning/ marking time for a full week of lessons- does that seem like enough time to you? That’s not even mentioning all of the other ridiculous hoops we have to jump through. As I’m sure someone will be along to say we finish at 3pm. ( which we definitely don’t with meetings, paperwork and contacting parents, running detentions and marking!

Lots of jobs are stressful but stop hating on teachers for long holidays. Just so frustrating when most of us are physically and mentally exhausted by this stage of the year.

Can't you ask him? Then you'd know.

This is partly why teachers are leaving. Little respect for teachers and the amount of work they do, especially evenings/weekends/holidays I worked in education for 25 years (not a teacher) and beleive me, the taxpayer certainly gets their money's worth!.

I’m a teacher and my job is exhausting. Other jobs are also exhausting and I let them complain about it too.

It is true that teachers do complain lots about their jobs being exhausting. That being said, I have never heard a teacher say to someone else complaining about their job being exhausting ‘WELL MY JOB IS MORE EXHAUSTING!’ but I’ve heard many people in other jobs do that to teachers when we are complaining.

Why do people not like teachers complaining? It always confuses me. I don’t get angry and frustrated when I hear other people talking about things in their job that are very difficult. I just think oh, that’s crap for them. It doesn’t fill me with the same rage that it seems to fill other people with when they hear teachers complain.

i think the world is full of lack of respect - very little jobs command any respect - it is not just in teaching

The emotional toll alone is in a league of its own as a teacher. Vulnerable children, vulnerable families, SEN children, abusive pupils, abusive parents, an alphabet soup of exterior agencies, pressures of government targets, pressures of management targets, pupil on pupil violence, safeguarding, policing pupil behaviour, maintaing calm in the face of threatened violence, bridging the gap where parents are failing children, maintaining a balance between what is appropriate involvement and what is over the line, providing advice, being a mandated reporter, planning lessons, ahereing to EHCPs and so on.

Not all exhaustion is physical.

Personally, I think it's unhelpful to make sweeping statements such as "teachers have more exhausting jobs than other professions" (as apparently was said on Radio 4 yesterday by presumably a teacher), or "teaching is not exhausting / no more exhausting than other professions" (as is being argued by the OP), without some kind of concrete evidence.

For the record, I am a full-time teacher. Is it exhausting? Absolutely it is. My working day is usually 11 hours long - longer if the commute is counted within that, and significantly longer on days including parents' evenings / after school meetings. In addition to teaching lessons and duties, a significant proportion of my time is spent dealing with parents and in parent / staff meetings. Rarely do I get to have much of a lunch break. I think what makes teaching as a job especially exhausting, however, is what others have already alluded to: you rarely "switch off". In other words, during the working week, you come home at the end of the day, have a quick supper / deal with family etc., and then you're working again late into the evening (and at weekends and during holidays), marking children's work and planning lessons for the following day, as well as other admin tasks - e.g. parent emails (which they continue to send in the evenings) and report writing. Often it feels like the tail wagging the dog. Do teachers deserve their holidays? 100% if the pace and intensity is anything like the schools I have worked in. Not that I am complaining: in the main, it's an exhausting job, but also a rewarding one too.

However, would I be confident enough to say that teaching is more / less exhausting than other professions? No, because I have no primary experience of those other professions. I have relatives who work in the NHS, though, and I know from them that they have it tough and they have very long days too. Many jobs and professions come with their challenges and stresses. Perhaps the teaching profession does have a reputation for complaining of their workload and how stressful the job is - but it doesn't come from nowhere, and importantly, more often than not, I don't think teachers are negating how exhausting other professions can be as well - other than this random person interviewed on the radio, which is the genesis for this thread.

OK teaching isn't mining coal but it is the mental exhaustion that is pretty full on

I've been a teacher, and I'd like to think I've been a supportive parent to my DCs' schools working with them to enhance my DCs' learning. I was even a regular volunteer in the classroom and supporting PTA events.

I hit frustrations with them, particularly through the junior school years when Covid hit and parents were frozen out of school life for 2 years. A couple of months before this DS1 had been diagnosed with autism on top of existing diagnoses of dyslexia and dyspraxia. It became very difficult to hold dialogue with the school. By the time we could finally have in-person meetings he was half-way through y6 and his needs were clearly not being met- even by the simplest, cheapest things like letting him write in pen rather than waiting for a non-existant cure for his ill-formed handwriting. It was very much a case that he's bright, masks, doesn't make a fuss and therefore was solidly ignored. When I tried to raise access arrangements for SATs, I was shut down with "he's doing well enough". He did not get extra time to balance his slow writing and processing speed and he did not meet his targets. When the result was released in his report the day before he left, "anxiety" was blamed. 1) school had never raised concerns about anxiety in class - infact they were quite happy to gaslight that he was happy despite evidence to the contrary (body language on dojo clips from in lesson) 2) anxiety with ASD is a legitimate reason to have access arrangements even without his literacy and processing difficulties. Reports were issued at the last moment so there was no opportunity for constructive dialogue about their content.

The whole school- parent relationship has changed compared to previous generations. There is more expectation on parents to support reading, homework, awareness of this, wear themed non-uniform for that. There isn't the clear distinction of school-home life that there was in my childhood and before. Some of it is positive in encouraging parental involvement, but it does put pressure on teachers by increasing the value and expectations of stakeholders. Not all parents are polite and have reasonable expectations.

Modern parenting culture can result in quite isolationist outcomes. Values that appear positive when raising one or two children don't transfer well into settings of 30 children of differing needs. This can trigger clashes between expectations of parents and teachers.

It is a hard balance to strike. Engaged, supportive parents are an asset to the school, but communicating with parents is a significant addition to teaching workload and emotional load.

Teaching at secondary in the 2000s, I wasn't expected to have much additional communication with parents. That began changing in the 2010s with phone calls to follow up on behaviour incidents. By my final year, with tired y8s and y9s that ended up adding an extra hour to my leaving time on Friday afternoons, displacing that hour's work to home that I already had to do. Some parents were actively supportive. Most ambivilent. It didn't result in a substantial difference in classroom behaviour.

I ended up leaving because teaching took more time and energy than I could reasonably spare while having my own young children. The growing extra meetings and admin/data ended up pushing out the planning and marking to late nights and very early mornings while my children slept and it was not a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

I utterly agree that teaching has elements that are hard and that most teachers don’t think it’s the hardest job but simply want acknowledgment it has tough parts and it’s not cushy/what you do if you can’t do anything else (also am opinion trotted out regularly)

I never understand in what sense teachers are not paid for the summer. I thought they just had an annual salary paid in 12 instalments. In what ways does the unpaid summer manifest? So for example if you move schools at Easter (say from
an academy to a trust school) is your employer up to Easter liable to cover 2/3 of your summer pay and your new one 1/3?
What if you left the profession at the end of a calendar year? Would you get bonus pay because some of it is saved to pay for the summer? How does it get worked out? In employment generally if you have 6 weeks of holiday over a full year & have only taken 1 week when you leave after 4 months of the holiday year you’d get to work a shorter notice or be paid for those days. Does the equivalent happen with teaching? If so does your holiday year run September - August?

Recruitment is clearly an issue, though I think the teaching recruiters would be overwhelmingly thrilled at a ten year average for retention! As an aside it’s just as well to note that although as I say training places for nurses are still vastly over subscribed, the worrying trend is that the actual numbers still applying for nursing training is falling year on year, so the situation could well be soon that , as is currently the case with teacher training, there are unfortunately not enough new entrants to cover the exodus rate of those already in the profession, and , worryingly, that the quality of those accepted subsequently falls.

The holiday issue is one that people just need to accept, UK school holidays are already among the shortest globally,( and it is worth remembering that holidays are more for the childrens benefit than the teachers). Teachers are paid for a number of days actual holiday, roughly in line with the amount of paid holiday in other professions, though this is subsumed into their normal pay and then divided by twelve for easy accounting, so it is not really seen as “paid” holiday. The days beyond this total are not paid.

If people want children in school for more days per year than at present then those extra days would have to be paid for above the current pay structure of teaching days+inset days+ paid holidays = teachers salary. Sadly the country can’t afford this.

i agree with you , it is working conditions that need looking at, in both professions.

Lolz. Predictable thread.
I’m secondary.
On my last day of term, I went to a child protection conference where the children are being removed from their family; had a child with a reading age of 7 tell me he loved English classes; had to do 4 home visits for vulnerable children who don’t attend; filed a police report about a parent and attended a meeting with police about contextual safeguarding over the summer (when I will be “on duty” for crisis/emergency situations) supported a colleague in a union meeting about targeted harassment.

OP, I wonder if you have children? If so, I don’t understand why you’d start a thread like this. Mostly, we want the best for the children we work with. Why goad a whole profession?

My partner, who works in a very physically hard job, made me a coffee and told me to enjoy the first day of my holiday - he sees the exhaustion and does not think it’s a competition. I’ll look after him a little later, when he is tired (and he will thank his lucky stars that, for once, I’m not thinking about work)

@noblegiraffe <waves> (change of username but I’ll DM you!)

Nobody can really compare jobs unless they've done all those jobs themselves. Even then, their comments will be the result of their own strengths/weaknesses/preferences. I suspect - but don't actually know - that welding is a tiring job in a physically exhausting and noisy environment. But whether it makes emotional demands on you is a different matter.
I have taught adults and that was exhausting. 100,% concentration all the way and few quiet moments. I would think teaching in a school would be far harder.
Ultimately, though, what's the point of comparing?

It’s all relative, teacher in a small primary school with low class numbers and no Sen is probably pretty good. That’s not most teachers experience. But equally social workers, doctors, nurses and many other roles are extremely hard and rarely financially lucrative in the public sector. And yes teachers get longer holidays/time off from the day to day role.

It doesn't just raise an economic question. These sectors are fundamental to society. Health, social care, education affect all of us. We need these sectors to function well. It's not good enough that some people in these sectors are taking home less than minimum wage.

A starting point would be to could increase corporation tax. Increase staring salaries of these professions. They also need to set legal limits for hours worked, especially for medical professions. They need to stop making suggesting about teacher workload and put in place legal guidance on what tasks cannot be delegated to teachers.

My son went straight into teaching in state secondary, he works very hard, I've seen it, he lives with me , long hours, lesson prep and marking, meetings after school most days for safeguarding , extra responsibilities etc , plus he goes in during half term and easter holidays to do revision sessions, often falls asleep on the sofa, gets to bed on time as has to get up at 630 to get in to school so no I don't think they have too long holidays and I'm glad he has the long summer break

He told me this week lots of staff are leaving his school and noone to replace them

@CJFJ1
no he wasnt a teacher, just knew the right words i guess to get the teachers on side, it seems

@Missedthis
i didnt goad any one

So you arrived in school 2 hours before the pupils?...what did you do for 2 hours, I live next to a primary school and the staff carpark is empty till 8.30.

He also goes in a few days before the children do before each term starts for meetings etc so his holiday isn't the same as the childrens

You did. The OP was goady, and the pitchforks/placards comment was goady.

Own it.

I am old enough to have friends who have done both teaching and other jobs. They have almost all said that teaching is the hardest because of the constant battle against negativity - from the children, from the parents and from the SLT. The primary teachers are a bit happier as the children tend to be fine.