One in four teachers work more than 60 hours a week and many work
in the evenings, despite successive government promises to reduce
their hours, according to a new UCL-led study.
The paper, published today and funded by
the Nuffield Foundation, is the first piece of
research to look at data from more than 40,000 primary and
secondary teachers in England collected between 1992 and
2017.
The findings show that teachers work around 47 hours
per week on average during term-time. This includes the time they
spend on marking, lesson planning and administration, with there
being little change in this figure over time. In the summer term
the average working week was nearer to 50 hours.
Additionally, teachers in England worked on average
eight hours more a week compared to teachers in comparable
industrialised OECD countries. For example, in 2018, while the
average full-time secondary teacher in England worked 49 hours
per week the OECD average was 41 hours. The equivalent figure for
teachers in Finland was just 34 hours.
The study found that around 40% of teachers in
England usually work in the evening, 10% usually work
at the weekend. Full-time secondary teachers also said
they spend almost as much time on management, administration,
marking and lesson planning each week (20.1 hours) as they do
actually teaching pupils (20.5 hours).
Lead author, Professor John Jerrim (UCL Institute of
Education) said: “This is the first study to attempt to track the
working hours of teachers over such a long period of
time.
“Successive secretaries of state for education have
made big commitments to teachers about their working hours – how
they are determined to reduce the burden of unnecessary tasks and
how they will monitor hours robustly.
“Our data show just how difficult it is to reduce
teacher workload and working hours. It is early days in
terms of judging the effectiveness of the policies put forward
over the past year. We’d like to see much closer monitoring of
teachers’ working hours, so that the impact of policy can be
assessed as soon as possible.
“Overall, bolder plans are needed by the government
to show they are serious about reducing working hours for
teachers and bringing them into line with other
countries.”
Researchers based their analysis upon four data
sources: the Labour Force Survey, the Teaching and Learning
International Survey, the UK Time-Use diaries and information
gathered from the Teacher-Tapp survey app. Together, these
allowed the researchers to compare the working hours of teachers
in England to other countries and to investigate change in
working hours over time. They were also able to explore how the
working hours of teachers vary over the academic year and
throughout a regular school day.
The paper highlights that the current methods used by
the government to collect data and working hours are not as
reliable as they could be and should be reformed. Researchers
believe response rates are low and the absence of diary method
data collection means it adds little value over other routinely
collected data sources.
Josh Hillman, Director of Education at the Nuffield
Foundation, said: “Earlier this year the government’s teacher
recruitment and retention strategy acknowledged the teacher
supply crisis in England. This research adds to our understanding
of this crisis by confirming that teachers are working
persistently long hours. This has been the case for over two
decades, despite a succession of policy announcements during this
period.
“As previous Nuffield-funded work has shown,
addressing teachers’ working hours is key to the improvement of
both teaching quality and supply. Taking a wider view of the
health of teachers over the past 25 years, the next phase of the
project will help us to gain an even better understanding of the
teacher workforce.”
