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
MNHQ have commented on this thread
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National Union of Teachers calls for lesson teaching time to be capped at four hours a day - what do you think?
JaneGMumsnet · 02/04/2013 16:04
Arisbottle I work about 80 hours a week
I'm dead on my feet when I do 70. You must be constantly exhausted.
As a science teacher, I used to regularly do 60+hr wks (before ML & going part time), including Sunday, and work 1-2 days a wk during each wk of holiday. Not everything can be left until the holidays though, so often I'd be in work at 7am, going home at 6pm when school locked up & working at home until 9/10pm at night.
Why? Because the government keeps moving the goalposts and changing what I'm meant to teach, how I'm meant to teach, who I'm meant to target, how I'm meant to identify those to target, how I'm meant to prove I've met the targets etc etc. In 9yrs of teaching, I have only taught the same scheme of work 2yrs running, once or twice. And this isn't because I keep moving schools!! This means I can't use last year's planning to teach this year.
Additionally, we have to plan everything from scratch because there are no "off the peg" resources that work without at least some sort of amendment...
It took about 3hrs to plan a 1.5hr lesson for a recent Ofsted inspection, to ensure we hit all the 'Outstanding' or 'Good' markers. Only for inspectors to see a mere 20mins & make sweeping judgements on the quality of teaching happening.
I am a member of the NUT but have to disagree with this idea. It doesn't help our public perception. The public generally likes to think teachers are feckless, lazy idiots, who moan more than they work. And yet want to entrust their children to our care for more & more hours, inc, for example, the holidays and so on 
The NUT should focus on getting Gove to back down on some of his worrying & downright idiotic schemes for making us more 'professional'. Afterall, whilst we accept that say, a GP, has an equally busy working wk to us, and personally, I don't think I get paid that badly, we're not paid on anywhere near the equivalent level to other 'professionals' who are expected to put up with this kind of pressure & expectation.
Bottomline; get Gove to back off and leave us to be professional, as so many of us are, and not make suggest such rash, knee-jerk 'solutions' as this motion.
TheNebulousBoojum, my old HoD did exactly that- she retrained as a plumber and was very happy.
I'm an advisory teacher now, and was shocked when I first started to realise that all the bits you do around teaching, when you think you're having free time, are what everyone else calls 'work' 
I work in my holiday time but it's officially not paid.
I don't see how this would work in a primary or special school. I work in SEN and am working with the children for 5 1/2 hrs each day. That's not all lessons but things like playtime & lunchtime which to me counts as teaching time. We help the children learn how to engage, how to interact, to develop social skills, to eat with a knife and fork etc. I'd love more time for paperwork but am not sure this is realistic.
I'm in the NUT & this is the first I have heard of this
Reastie don't you have time after the children have gone home(most people I know work until 6)along with PPA,weekends and holidays.
I used to have plenty of time pre dc and that was before the internet,white boards and guided reading.
My dp works a lot more hours,doesn't have the hols or the good plated pension.
You seriously think kids should just get taught until 1pm? What are we supposed to do then as parents pick them up or leave them to be taught by an endless stream of TAs or supply teachers.
Do teachers really think ridiculous requests like this are going to get support for striking?
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