National Union of Teachers calls for lesson teaching time to be capped at four hours a day - what do you think?

[JaneGMumsnet]

Hello,

We've been asked by Metro to find out your thoughts on the news that the National Union of Teachers (NUT) has said that teachers should spend no more than 20 hours a week taking classes (four hours a day).

The NUT called for new limits on working hours amid concerns that school staff are facing "totally unsustainable" workloads. In some cases, teachers are left with little time to eat, talk, think or even go to the toilet, the NUT's annual conference in Liverpool heard.

The NUT passed a motion demanding a new working week of 20 hours' teaching time, up to 10 hours of lesson preparation and marking, and five hours of other duties. Other duties include time spent inputting data and at parents' evenings. This marks a drastic reduction in teachers' hours, the conference heard.

NUT Coventry representative Christopher Denson claimed that official figures from 2010 show that a primary classroom teacher works 50.2 hours a week on average, while a secondary school teacher works an average of 49.9 hours. "The same data tells us that four in five teachers have worked all through a night to catch up with work and spend every single term-time Sunday catching up with lessons," Mr Denson said. He added: "It's essential that we act to ensure that what's already NUT policy - a maximum working week of 35 hours - becomes a reality for teachers."

Do you agree with the NUT's position?

If you are a teacher, do Mr Denson's comments resonate with you?

We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Many thanks,

MNHQ

And t hijavr also rarely seeing people working so long hours either. Especially when you bear ions that hols ate actually used to do some preparation work anyway so are not hold as such anyway. That's called working from home instead of the office bit it's still working.

As a daughter of teachers, I spent most of my school holidays in the schools they worked in, emptying cupboards, making tubular bells, stapling displays, counting workbooks, whilst my parents did lesson prep and marking

Sometimes they let us play with the equipment. Mostly it was just doing chores though.

Now I feel really bad for my DCs :(

You make your kids clean out cupboards too?

At least I got to spend time with my parents I guess. I never quite understood the working world as an young adult. WTF do you MEAN I only get 4 weeks not at work? Are you fecking crazy?

starlight my dcs are cupboard cleaners in training. I think you have to work up to that level of responsibility. At the moment they are pencil sharpeners and general sorters though ds 8yrs is pretty handy with a laminater

As a mother first, and a teacher second, i can only work part-time due to the demands of the job. It's sad that if you work a 40 hour week as a teacher (and that's EVERY one of those 40 hours working - no Facebook time like in many offices!) you probably cannot deliver consistently outstanding lessons. An outstanding lesson takes at least an hour to plan if you are to cater for every child in the class.

This is only possible if other tasks are reduced & paperwork is slashed!

MadameCastiofiore - which magic gremlins in a school do you think kick in at 3.30 to put up all the classroom displays of work (something checked by ofsted....), mark books, plan lessons, have staff meetings, fill out endless progression documentation showing each child's ability, write reports, have meetings with parents, plan out of school trips, plan incoming visitors and activities, manage discipline matters, complete child protection documentation and answer queries from social workers and Ed Psychs etc etc?

4 hours teaching a day is 6x40 minute lessons. In a secondary school, 3 or 4 of those lessons may result in homework to be marked - that's 90 - 120 pieces of work minimum to be marked, corrected, graded and recorded on the system.

I would rather teachers had time to plan lessons, and mark work and think about what pupils need, rather than be madly chasing targets and working minutely to the governments prescriptive demands.

OK I'll get flamed for this I know, but could some teacher answer a question for me please.. I've read the whole thread BTW but what I want to know is teachers talk about lesson planning taking up time. The school my DS go to has the same lessons year on year, so my eldest DS learnt about XYZ and now my youngest is doing the same lessons??

So could someone explain to me why lesson planning takes so long when the school my DS go to rolls out the same lessons year on year.

BTW I think a teacher webcam would be a grand idea as someone said up thread "I wish parents knew how much we did" I for one think that would be great then we can't moan about inset days ever again.

Goingup I don't spend as long planning as much as everyone else on here . I teach roughly the same lessons which are tweaked .

goingup at my secondary school, whilst we might teach roughly the same topic in lessons each year to say, a GCSE class, the actual content of the lesson would vary. So, for example, the exam board has removed part of a topic, so you tweak the lesson so you'd delete some bits, add others & try to make it flow. You might have a different ability class to last year, so you'd have to emphasise some bits & not others. You might have students with EAL, SEN etc so you have to maybe change an activity or how you approach or assess a task. The list goes on and on... Even if the lesson is pretty much planned and changes little, you might have to tweak things. Or at least, that's what good (or aspiring to be good) teachers do/try to do.

People don't always realise that the preparation, marking and assessment demands can be significantly more than the 8.45 - 3.15 teaching time. With 30 children in my class, marking can be a nightmare. Imagine you give yourself just one minute to open each book, check and mark every calculation they've written, write a comment on how they did and set a target for how they could improve etc. then multiply that by 30 there's 30 mins marking time then multiply that by at least 4 lessons and you have a minimum of 2 hours marking per night.

goinup to add to chunkys comment - also you tweak the lesson based on the group you have. Ihave some lessons I've planned which work great with certain classes/groups of students but would not work with others. I need to alter how I deliver the material based on the group I'm teaching. This is the case with every lesson. I'm not a robot throwing out exactly the same lesson year upon year - there's always variation based on the students and how they respond and their needs.

The school my DS go to has the same lessons year on year, so my eldest DS learnt about XYZ and now my youngest is doing the same lessons??

You do swap year groups! You don't have 40 years in one school in one age range (dreadful for the DCs if you do) and even if you do then what you are teaching changes. You are teaching different children-you suit it to the children that you have. You differentiate. No two years and classes are going to be the same. As a teacher you would get thoroughly bored-you constantly find new resources, new ways of doing things.
I am convinced that people would be happy with robots!!!

Sorry-cross posted with reastie-I see that she immediately thought robots too.

starlight perhaps your parents are younger than mine, but both mine were teachers and i can assure you that once the summer holidays started, they almost never went into work, perhaps one day prep before going back. I do agree the administrative workload has increased though as I have the same in my own job (without the holidays).

'You differentiate'

Perhaps to some extent and for some. No-one differentiated for my child with SEN. If he couldn't do it they way the teacher wanted to teach him then we were told by the school it was because he wasn't capable.

I rarely go in during the holidays. I have to go in for results and during the last week following results and I may take a day to sort out my room. Most of the teachers at my school are similar. I am away for the whole of this holiday so will not be going in at all. Will be away for most of the summer holiday as well.

My mum and dad just hit retirement age. Would that make them younger?

They always taught in rough schools though. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Wow clover you're good to mark each piece in just 1 min! it would take me double to decipher my yr1s its scary when you think thats 4hrs of marking!

I thought that too about clover marking quickly! Takes me ages to mark work and think of useful comments for students to work towards achieving.

I think an awful lot of teachers here are over-egging the pudding wrt lesson planning.

Lesson planning is a big deal in the first year, no question. Undoubtably in the second year, the teacher will pick up at least one new class, so has to put a lot of energy into lesson planning there. After that, previous lessons all come flooding back.

If you are good at organising your computer files, it should be pretty easy to find the lesson from the previous year and tweak it for the new class. If you are diligent about reflecting on lessons, any less successful parts can be removed or adjusted.

Personally, I spend an hour a week, on a Friday, planning my lessons for the following week. I just hand-write my outlines into my planner and write out technician orders (science teacher). I also print out any student sheets that I will need. It seriously takes me an hour tops. I have 9 different student groups, with 2 - 4 lessons per week.

My focus on planning is to make sure I have any resources I might want ready - so practicals, worksheets, A/V. I like to be responsive, however, to pupil questions, so will divert from my outline plans, rummage in my cupboards, do quick YouTube searches etc.

Formal lesson plans are useful in observed lessons as you make allowances for things going wrong, eg student not bringing their textbook to the lesson. You are over-prepared with resources. After that, they can easily take away the spontaneity and the spirit of the lesson. There is also only a downside risk in that you can only deviate from them.