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

It's not political bollocks, it's true.

See for me Polly that has been the real killer this year - I only teach 0.6, but have about 180 Students due to increasing class sizes. My sixth form classes this year have had nowhere near the amount of individual support and feedback the year before had as there are just too many. In the last term I have really focused on them but at the expense of marking next to no key stage 3 classes. I just can't fit it in. I spend an awful
Lot of time replying to emails from students with queries as there isn't the time in lessons so this was the only solution. They attempt questions - take a photo of their work on their smartphone and email it to me with their query... If counting hours I work this is the sort of thing that gets left out of my hours count.

Of course teachers will leave if they don't get the holidays- you can't work those hours without the breaks. Feenie is quite right about 50% within 5 years because of the workload.

At parents evening I was invited to look at my kids' books and saw that for every single worksheet they had done there were detailed comments from the teacher ......... now I understand that she has to do this to satisfy the wankers from OFSTED .............. but how sad that she has no time to actually go through the work with the children so the comments that she leaves are read by absolutely noone except a parent at parents evening and the OFSTED inspector. So where my dd was getting 1/9 in maths day in day out the teacher had written in detail where she was going wrong, but told me openly that she didn't have the time to go through this with dd, but I could do it at home if I wished. What an absolute farce. So yes, clearly teachers need more time to teach and less on meaningless paperwork.

WRT to the holiday issue I genuinely do not understand all this about holidays being unpaid. You are employed to do a job and there is a salary that goes with it. This is true of any job with an annual salary. You don't hear any other profession saying well, I earn £25k to be an office manager working 50 hour weeks, but sadly my 5 weeks annual holiday are unpaid.

Agree with all the other teachers on the thread saying don't reduce our teaching hours, reduce the ridiculous amounts of unnecessary, pointless paperwork.

Marking, feedback, planning and assessing - all fine. Data analysis, producing schemes of work and full lesson plans and everything written down to the tiniest detail as proof that you're doing your job - not fine. Out of my PPA time, the vast majority is spent not planning, preparing or assessing as it should be, but replying to demands for analysis of this that or other thing. It's all about Ofsted... every visit to our Satisfactory school (oh sorry, not stisfactory any more...) results in a further list of bullshit tasks teachers and dept heads need to produce to demonstrate and prove that we are doing our jobs I too love the days when I have a full teaching load - no one can bug me for a random paperwork task. NUT have sadly got it wrong here and will win no friends in the media. Playing into Gove's hands.

That's what our contracts state, StickyFloor - we are contracted for 195 days per year.

"You can't work those hours without the breaks"

Sorry, but that is why teachers are so frequently demonised in the media and by parents who work those hours but do not get those breaks. Try working those hours with just 5 weeks holiday a year, and then you will understand why teachers who try and raise legitimate issues about the pressures placed on them will not be properly heard; at some point they always claim to be overworked and overtired and those working outside of teaching will shout them down.

We are contracted to work 1265 hours over 195 days. Our pay is worked out on this basis. (& on this largely fictitious basis, it's not a bad salary, to be fair).

The 1265 hours are what is called directed time: ie. my HT can direct me 'ravenAK, go & teach gothic fiction to year 9, top set, in room 12' or 'ravenAK, attend a meeting about '.

Examples of 'directed time' breakdowns can be found on pages 9 & 10 here.

How I get my marking & planning done, aside from the 10% of my directed timetable which is theoretically set aside for it, is my problem, & is unpaid overtime - evenings & weekends, basically. There's absolutely no way I ever do more than scratch the surface whilst in school.

Our wages are then paid on 12 occasions over the year, to make it easier to budget. No idea when this was put in place, but it's obviously sensible for everyone's convenience.

Some (well, most) teachers 'save up' big jobs eg. marking controlled assessments, writing new schemes of learning for the hols.

Others work several hours a night/all weekend in term time & take their hols off with a clear conscience.

So no, holidays aren't paid. I have no idea why this is so contentious: it's a simple statement of fact re teaching contracts.

Stickyfloor

You are misunderstanding. The officer manager's 5 weeks annual holiday are not unpaid, so why would they say that? The holidays are part of their terms and conditions.

Part of a teachers' terms and conditions is that we are only contracted to work term-time, which is why our salaries are low compared to similar jobs with the same amount of training, responsibility, stress etc. Because there is a substantial part of the year that we are not paid for.

Yet the British public thinks that we work short hours during term time and get all these lovely paid holidays on top. We don't. And if it weren't for those holidays that people despise us for, nobody would do the bloomin' job! I wouldn't work 70 hours a week all year round for £21.5k, after 5 years of training/education to get there. No way!

I am contracted to work 156 days per year and get 144 hours holiday paid for by my company, my salary is paid over 12 months and I get the same amount of money each month.

So if you are contracted for 195 hours and paid for only the 195 hours surely that is illegal?

I'm not going to play the "woe is me" game with you, StickyFloor.

If you think that ANY teacher could deliver quality first lessons all year round, working 70 hours a week, without breaks, then you are deluded.

Our children deserve better. I've worked abroad in countries where teachers have to do those hours all year round and it's not a pretty sight. You'd find teachers passed out on the floor in the staff room. Is that what you want for our children and our schools?

I have the same pay scale whether I do supply or am contracted.
As a supply teacher I am payed for the hours I work- I get a higher rate because I don't get any pay in the holidays. On a contract I get less because the samemoney has to stretch over the holiday. Perhaps that explains it. Teachers do not get paid for the holidays and the government couldn't afford the extra money needed if holidays were to be shorter.

i would agree to be paid less if i could have it in writing that

a) no more articles implying i work 20 hours pw would be written

b) people would assume that i was Not an evil workshy malingerer out to ruin the lives of children until i proved otherwise. currently it feels like the opposite

c) randoms who have not set foot in a school since they were pupils would acknowledge that actually, they do not know my job, or its best practice inside and out, and just possibly after 10 years at the chalkface and a further degree in education i maybe know one or two things myself

bleah.

no exotic - that is more confusing

if you are paid more by an agency to cover you not getting holiday pay - then why are the other teachers on contracts paid less but paid all year around?

surely if no one is getting holiday pay you would all be paid the same?

I can't see why people want exhausted, demoralised teachers, teaching their children - I certainly don't.

I don't work for an agency- I work for the LEA - the same as when I am on a contract.

DH has 3 periods a week for PPA. 1 is spent being a PGCE mentor, the other is taken for cover every week. So he only gets 1 a week. After school is spent at ridiculous meetings when the time could be better spent doing actual marking, planning etc.

I often mention my friend who's a teacher and I recommended the mooncup to as there are 2 days a week she absolutely does not have time to go to the toilet to change a tampon due to her timetable.

However, I've always seen the workload as a yearly workload which is condensed into a very stressful high-pressured 195 days. I don't think you could sustain that level of pressure if you weren't ever more than 6 weeks from a school holiday (or 7/8 weeks in the autumn term).

I've also realised that DH only gets a comparative 12 weeks holiday a year as the bank holidays nearly always fall into the school holidays so he doesn't get those as extra like most people in other jobs.

Plus there is often a perception that teachers get INSET days off, which they don't. My DM STILL has to be reminded every time that just because the DC are off, DH still goes in.

so why do you get different pay? if there is no holiday pay you would surely be paid the same regardless?

I think that teachers should be paid more, respected more, freed from the shackles of OFSTED and allowed just to bloody teach which is what they have trained for.

But I think this issue of holiday pay is hugely contentious because the public think teachers are lazy, and claiming that you are unpaid for holidays really doesn't help as it means the real issues won't be heard.

Over a 12 month period you receive a salary and within that you have to work in the classroom, and work at home and work at weekends and in holidays and the rest of the time is your actual holiday. It doesn't really matter what your contract says.

How many people do you think are working with contracts that say they will work 35 hour weeks but actually they work 60 or 70 hour weeks too and also take stuff home at the weekend and in their holidays? So what?

You have a job to do and a salary that goes with it for the year.

A supply teacher gets paid for the hours worked- they fill in a form. The disadvantage is that you get no chance of earning a penny in August, December is a lean month etc. A contracted teacher wouldn't want a month without pay and so they get less in the term to cover it. You can't do that with supply because you don't know when you will work.

@ivykaty44: Because supply teachers get the same daily rate as any other teacher, ie. their salary dependent on pay scale/195.

So a supply teacher gets 'whatever that is' for each day worked, whether (s)he works one day or 195 in a given school year.

A teacher on a contract gets 'whatever that is' x 195 then divvied up into 12 lumps, paid each calendar month.

So if exotic & I both taught in the same school on the same day, & assuming we're on the same point on the scale, on paper she'd get more on a supply contract for that day. But if she taught all 195 days (possibly in several different schools) we'd both earn the same over the year.

I never get time to change a tampon either. I thought it was only me!What people who claim that plenty of other professions do the same hours don't seem to get, is we are dealing with loads of kids every day.

How would some of them feel dealing with a few of their own kids alone for 5 hours a day every day? Then add in about 25 of someone else's children too and imagine how knackering that is. Then you have to get them to concentrate/pay attention/ remove phones/ wipe tears/ sort out arguments/wear correct uniform/ blah blah x 30 of someone else's children day in, day out....

Oh, fgs. But we are NOT PAID for the holidays and it DOES affect our salaries so it IS relevant. It's not like it doesn't make a difference to anything, it does.

As a side note:
Especially when every year you have to put up with the let's-get-rid-of-all-holidays and all-teachers-are-lazy-and-only-work-9to3 argument from the media, which fuels the perception that we all sit around earning £37k a year or something ridiculously lovely like that, and get lots of paid holidays on top. We don't.

Perhaps this is something that you have to be a teacher to understand because people just aren't understanding the issue and how it affects things.

ivy it's not hard. Let's imagine a teacher gets paid £19,500 per year, £100 per day. A teacher on a contract in a school gets £1,625 every month. A supply teacher might work for one week in one school, then three weeks in another, then have no work for a month and so on. That might be the supply teacher's own choice, or maybe there's no supply work available or maybe it's the summer holidays. The supply teacher would get £500 for the week in one school, then £1500 for the three weeks elsewhere then nothing for the week with no work. With me so far? IF the supply teacher worked on all 195 available days in the school year, then she would earn £19,500- the same as the contracted teacher. She just wouldn't get it in 12 equal chunks.