‘TEACHERS working 60 hours a week is totally unacceptable and is exacerbating the teacher shortage,’ warns Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, today.
Commenting on the Education Policy Institute’s publication Teacher workload and professional development in England’s secondary schools: insights from TALIS, Courtney said: ‘This report confirms what the NUT has been saying – that excessive accountability measures, which have little to do with improving education, are the driving force behind this long-hours culture.
‘On top of low starting pay and little or no time for professional development, it is hardly surprising that teachers are voting with their feet and leaving the profession in such large numbers.
‘Accountability and testing measures are harming children’s learning and, in some cases, their well-being. Overzealous marking arrangements have reached ludicrous time-consuming proportions, with teachers expected to engage in “triple marking” involving extensive and time-consuming dialogue with pupils, a practice with no proven educational benefits.’
Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: ‘This report confirms what teachers tell us – that bureaucracy is overwhelming their working lives, and is crowding out the valuable professional activities they should be doing.
‘Most worrying is the fact that teachers’ professional development is being cut, at a time when there is massive change in the curriculum, its assessment and qualifications. Teachers want to do the best they can for their pupils, but they are being held back by “busy work” and a lack of training and development which would enable them to meet the challenge of change which, for many, is overwhelming.
‘The government must take heed: rushed, badly implemented and botched educational reforms result in stressed, overtired and less effective teachers. Ministers must take responsibility for a mess which is largely of their own making. Rather than rushing to act, they should carefully consider the extent to which they have contributed to teachers working the most unpaid overtime of any profession.’
Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, said: ‘Teachers’ professional lives are blighted by an excessive workload. Year-on-year increasing numbers of teachers leave the profession and potential recruits are deterred from joining it because of the toxic combination of increasing workload and decreasing pay.
‘The excessive freedoms and flexibilities the government has given to schools have enabled poor management practices, which overburden and underpay teachers, to flourish. Yet ministers continue to fiddle while teachers burn out and the children and young people they teach lose out.’
The OECD’s TALIS report found: ‘England has younger teachers and headteachers, fewer modern language teachers, more autonomous schools, significantly greater numbers of teaching assistants and administrative and managerial staff in schools, and teachers reporting longer total working hours on average but not face-to-face teaching hours.’
