Genuinely, how many hours do do work?

[EndlessJob]

I think I've lost sight a little since moving into the independent sector.

SMT, so take home more work, but:

School day 8-5
Meetings or prep for one hour after 2/3 days
Saturday school 9-1

But
17 weeks holiday

Take work home every day, usually 3-4 hours per day. Work all Saturday afternoon, only 3 ish hours on Sundays.

This works out at about 80 hours per week, but for only 35 weeks a year. I probably do part time hours for about half of each holidays, so about 30 hours per week for 8 of the holidays weeks.

80 x 35 = 2800 term time hours
30 x 8 = 240 holiday hours

So, 3040 hours (give or take, fairly conservatively) per year, which is 58.5 hours per calendar week averaged.

Is this normal? Is this the same in the state sector? Or other private schools? It just seems too much. I can't do this until I'm 68!

[trinity0097]

I work 6.20am to 6pm 5 days a week during term time, plus any longer evenings like parents' evenings, so I stayed until 9pm twice this week.
During term time I do at least 4-5 hours at school every weekend, plus I work every weekday in the holidays for probably 6-8 hours, other than perhaps 2 weeks abroad over the year and a couple of days at Xmas. At busy times I will be in school every day of the week. My commute is 30min each way too (more in the evenings when the m25 snarls up!)

Deputy Head in a prep school plus head of dept of a core subject, data manager and having to teach more than I have time for!!!

In fact off to bed just now as I have to be up early tomorrow to be in school by 7.45am to unlock for matches.

[Rainuntilseptember]

Is it worth it Trinity?

[leccybill]

Wow, Trinity - you win. I feel exhausted reading about it. 6-8 hours a day in the holidays - for real?
I do no work in the holidays.

[trinity0097]

I enjoy it, but I am quite shattered at the moment! Never a dull moment!

Did 7.40am to 2.30pm today, will be back tomorrow, probably 8.30am to 12pm, but I have got most of the half term reports printed and ready for staff to sign!

[Rainuntilseptember]

Do you have dcs Trinity? And do you expect the staff under you to work like this? You are doing the work or more than one person.

[FritataPatate]

Marking if needed maybe 40 mins once a week (I'm a fast marker) and you're an English teacher, Piggy ? I would genuinely like some tips on how you manage that! I only teach 0.6 which equates to 3 days in school. I spend most of my 2 days off prepping and marking at this time of year. At the moment yr 10 and 11 have had Lit PPEs, year 13 are doing coursework which needs checking and next week 8s and 9s are doing assessments.
Suggestions on getting through this quickly gratefully received!

[Piggywaspushed]

I wish I knew. I think it's just experience and focus. I dedicate particular PPEs to mark certain things and don't let anything disrupt or distract me. I am a very fast reader too so I am a bit of machine! I use codes for SPaG and never correct things for the students : I make them locate what the errors are and correct them. I do write long comments though but dedicate whole lessons to feedbacks and improvements . What I am slow at (according to our schedules!) is teaching. I cannot get through texts as quickly as we are supposed to and hate trying to teach lit texts in half term blocks. I think it is a growing thing in English teaching that English teachers don't actually like - or enthuse about - books!

To be fair , if I have coursework, I do need to bring that home usually.

What are PPEs?

I am also fairly philosophical. if I haven't had time to mark something, the kids will have to wait a few more days : it won't kill them. If marking is not something which goes on our official data tracking I spend much less time on it : a short comment and a stamp!

10 - 15 years ago , I used to let marking pile up and had a huge folder of stuff to mark which I then blitzed through - but they were different times and I can't get away with that now. My new method of generally doing it at the first available opportunity is more efficient.

I used to be a HOY - marking was much more of an issue then because I was always pulled in several directions at once : with the pastoral team disapproving if I sat and marked and the English dept disapproving if I didn't!

[Piggywaspushed]

Just to give you a rough idea, a set of year 10 assessments (24 timed essays, so not always very long!) would take me 2- 3 hours in total.

[Piggywaspushed]

I must say I don't get the benefits of being part time, if part time staff then fill all their non paid days with school work!?

We used to have an AST in our dept who was part time. She was set up as a role model to all of us because her lessons were so amazingly taught and resourced. It irritated me a bit because I knew she had spent a whole (child free) day prepping it all.

[FritataPatate]

Thanks for the reply, Piggy. PPEs = pre public exams, or mocks (is it only my school that has stupid new acronyms?). I absolutely need to be more disciplined about work load and think about more time-effective ways of giving feedback.
This thread is very useful, OP, (and eye-opening!).

[Piggywaspushed]

I still feel exhausted though! My workload in terms of marking has spiralled since the new GCSEs .

We still call them mocks - old school style!

How are you giving feedback?

I have a friend who bemoans the hours she spends marking. When I look at it , it's a load of random ticks (even she says they are random) a short illegible comment and a target. I genuinely don't know why it takes her so much longer than me. I wonder whether she agonises for a lot longer than me over the mark to award- or whether it genuinely with English comes down to reading speed.

[Piggywaspushed]

Your school ahs to be held to account to some extent of they have year 10 and 11 mocks at the same time!

[thebookeatinggirl]

I get to school at 7.45 and leave between 4.45-5.45, depending on meetings, workload and things that need doing in the classroom. I then work most evenings from 7-9, and do at least 4 hours at some point over the weekend.
I'm a bog standard KS1 teacher with nearly 25 years experience. Current school is much better than last in terms of marking and planning expectations, but it still all takes a long time. Simply planning (for me and 2 TAs, class and 1:1, who needs completely differentiated curriculum) and resourcing English, Maths, Science, theme, RWI, additional whole class phonics, guided reading, homework, IEPs, handwriting, daily interventions etc takes forever.

I'm hoping that it will get better as I'm in a new school with new systems and approaches so I'm feeling hopeful....

[trinity0097]

I don't expect others to work as hard as me.

No kids, wouldn't be compatible!

Doing the work of more than one seems to follow me about, when I left my last job two full timers were appointed to replace me and some tasks outsourced to other people. Didn't work nearly as hard there as I am now. At least I am valued now, got a double digit percentage pay rise this year and my head appreciates me.

[leccybill]

These workaholics, putting the rest of us to shame!
I've actually done no work this weekend. I had some really nice plans and it's been lovely, I felt like me again. I'm free p1 tomorrow and I've got a rough idea of what I'm doing. It'll be fine.

[Rainuntilseptember]

Thing is, why employ two workers who will do a decent job and work a normal full-time job, when you can appoint one workaholic person? Why ever appoint a parent who will want to see their dcs before they are asleep if you can choose someone who will work all hours for you? I think this is a big issue and I do not mean to put the blame on the individual working the crazy hours (their employer is at fault) but you have to see how this undermines other people’s jobs. It’s like someone volunteering to work for less than minimum wage.

[Piggywaspushed]

I tend to agree rain. I think teaching has become full of 'how high would you like me to jump?' types who often then secure promotion quite rapidly (and usually internally) to leadership posts because of their willingness to overwork. And that then has a knock on effect in terms of expectations of all staff. Where once my school was an 8 o'clock arrival as normal institution, I now arrive at about 7.50 and the car park is full. Hardly anyone used to stay beyond maybe 4.15 now many stay til 6 or later.

This definitely did not used to be the case and has somewhat eroded workload rights - or at least changed the debate!

There are a lot of martyrs in teaching...

And I have always argued that the students should be working harder than the teachers ... I think that is very rarely the case!

[Rainuntilseptember]

Agree, a teaching career is a marathon not a sprint, how many of those working every evening and weekend will still even be in the job at 60.

[leccybill]

All so true - my place is full of what I call thrusters. It just raises the bar to an inhumane level.
Luckily these days, after many years of intolerable hours, I now realise that my own child comes before any others so I leave before 4pm if no meetings on and work while she's in bed. I left at 3.35 today - don't feel one bit guilty!

[Piggywaspushed]

To be honest, I could say I control my hours for my DCs -and certainly that is some of it as they do often require fetching and carrying. But really, I do it to stay at least a little bit sane. It's easy to lose perspective.

[phlebasconsidered]

Before we were academised I could leave when I wanted if it wasn't a meeting night. Now we are told when to be in and when to leave. It's not always a choice anymore.

I'm looking for an lea school to move to but in our area 2 MATs are pretty much sewing up both primaries and secondaries. Amazingly, they seem to be employing mostly cheap young nqt's and the older teachers who happen to be expensive are vanishing. Woe betide you if you mention.work life balance or attempt to question their understanding of directed time!

[Piggywaspushed]

This is crazy! What times are they saying??

How are these academies getting away with bullying staff like this?

No wonder my head pays no heed to us if anyone sticks their head above the parapet.

You lot are making me wary of moving schools! But I was already steering clear of big MATs anyway.

My school is an academy - so it's not really to do with the academies per se this bullying : it's the leaders who they appoint...

[Piggywaspushed]

Surely though phleb , the times they are saying aren't some of the crazy times some people upthread appear at and leave school?

if my school said 8 til 3.30 , for example, I think most people would then stomach it and then sneak off, avoiding cctv if they were free