Tag Archives: working hours

Gatsby Survey confirms importance of pay and working conditions for would-be teachers

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A Gatsby funded study by a team at London’s UCL has researched assumptions about why people do -or do not- choose to become a teacher in the UK and the US. The findings were that extrinsic rewards drive career choices. The report found that in both countries, extrinsic factors such as salary, working hours and paid leave were the most powerful drivers of career choice. Altruistic motives did play a role – participants were willing to accept lower pay for roles with higher social impact – but these were consistently smaller than the influence of pay and workload.’ New research reveals what really attracts graduates to teaching  | Gatsby Education

These factors were even seen among those undergraduates who already said they were already considering becoming a teacher.

Replies to the UCL study suggested that increasing working hours beyond 40 per week to that of a typical teacher reduced attractiveness of teaching by 15%, and that teachers holiday entitlement increased attractiveness by 11%. Increased salary raised job attractiveness by 9%.

How do these findings compare with previous research? In May 1997, almost 20 years ago, and during another period of challenges in recruiting graduates into teaching, The School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) commissioned the agency BMRB to investigate what factors influenced the attitudes towards teaching shortage subjects/ This was a small-scale study involving only 82 graduates compared with the 2,000 undergraduates, in both the UK and the US, surveyed by the UCL team.

BMRB students said that

  • Teaching should be a vocation
  • Those sampled felt not all were suited to be a teacher
  • There were serious concerns about both working conditions and stress levels
  • Pay was acknowledged to be a significant factor – although not a deterrent to those determined to teach, a better pay structure would make teaching more attractive to those considering other options.

The views BMRB found ‘were not specific to those studying the shortage subjects … but were common across the different subject areas. ‘

So, the common message from both studies, nearly twenty years apart, and of different participant sizes and survey methods, is that teaching must be competitive in regard to pay and working conditions to attract graduates in a competitive labour market.

Another study, in 2000, for the Office of Manpower Economic (OME), by Whitmuir Research, reported similar finding to the BMRB list, but added, disruptive pupils; lack of parental support and the cost of tuition feed to the list.

A large-scale study of 1,880 final year undergradues across 26 HEIs for the TTA in 1999, distributed through careers services, found more interest amongst women than men in teaching as a career, and amongst those in post-1992 higher education institutions.

A review of where applicants to teaching come from, based on DfE data through the common application process would be a sensible annual outcome in order to see if there are changes in the key undergraduate market with regard to teaching as a career.

It seems likely that the STRB knows the issue around recruiting into the teaching profession. The question every year is – will the STRB stand up to government on behalf of the children of this country and ensure that teaching is an attractive career for graduates across all subjects?

Teachers work long hours in term-time

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The DfE has now published their latest school leaders and teachers’ workload survey as part of their regular series of surveys about the working lives or teachers and school leaders. Working lives of teachers and leaders – wave 1 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

On workload the key paragraphs are that

Average working hours for leaders in both primary and secondary schools remain substantially lower than they were in the 2016 Teacher Workload Survey (TWS) but are slightly higher than those reported in the 2019 TWS.

The average working hours for teachers were significantly lower than reported in the 2016 and 2019 TWS; however, this reduction was driven by reduced primary teacher hours specifically, while working hours for secondary teachers were not significantly different to those reported in the 2019 TWS.

In a similar pattern to that found in the Teacher Workload Surveys, secondary leaders reported working longer hours than primary leaders (58.3 vs. 56.2 for primary leaders), but secondary teachers reported working fewer hours than primary teachers (48.5 vs. 49.1 for primary teachers).

There were further notable differences by sub-groups of respondents. For full-time leaders, reported average hours were:

• Higher for leaders working in primary (57.2) or secondary (58.6) school than leaders working in special schools / PRU / AP (54.7)

• Higher among leaders working at academy schools (58.4) than those working in LA maintained schools (56.6).

For full-time teachers, reported average hours were:

• Higher for teachers working in primary (53.2) or secondary (51.2) schools than teachers working in special schools / PRU / AP (48.2)

• Higher for leading practitioners (54.4) and classroom teachers (52.4) than ECTs (49.9) and unqualified teachers (46.8)

Satisfaction with workload

Most teachers and leaders disagreed that their workload was acceptable (72%) and that they had sufficient control over it (62%).

This is a slight increase on the TWS 2019, where just under seven-in-ten (69%) of those surveyed disagreed their workload was acceptable, though it is a considerable decrease on the TWS 2016, where almost nine-in-ten (87%) disagreed.

Combined, over half (56%) of teachers and leaders thought that their workload was both unacceptable and that they did not have sufficient control over it.

Predictably, those who disagreed that their workload was acceptable reported higher working hours (an average of 51.6 for those who disagreed vs. an average of 43.7 for those who agreed).

More experienced teachers and leaders were also more likely to disagree that their workload was acceptable: 66% of those who had been qualified for up to 3 years disagreed with the statement compared to 73% who had been qualified for over 3 years.

Perhaps not surprisingly, head teachers and others on the Leadership Scale were more likely to report the use of flexible working arrangements, including working at home than were classroom teachers. However, it is not clear whether the question was confined to the normal working day or at any time? As there was also a question about PPA time taken off-site that may have subsumed some home working for non-school leaders.  

Perhaps one of the least surprising findings was that teachers’ views on pupil behaviour were also correlated with school Ofsted rating31, as three quarters (75%) of those in schools with an outstanding Ofsted rating labelled pupil behaviour as good or ‘very good’, compared to just under three-in-ten (28%) of those in schools with special measures/with serious weaknesses.

This finding may correlate with higher staff turnover in schools this more adverse Ofsted ratings. Given that many schools won’t have had a rating for sometime now, this suggested the deep-seated nature of discipline issue sin some schools that are aggravated by any shortage of teachers in the system.

There are some disturbing percentages around the area of teacher well-being, but that’s for another post.

Overall, it is possible to see why teachers have joined in the general public sector display of industrial action and that although discipline isn’t the factor that it was a generation and more ago, other issues, such as marking and preparation frustrate and concern the present generation of teachers.  

How much holiday do teachers have?

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According to the DfE’s Teacher recruitment website

Holidays

You’ll get more days holiday than people in many other professions. In school, full-time teachers work 195 days per year.

For comparison, you’d work 227 days per year (on average) if you worked full time in an office.

Teaching salaries and benefits | Get Into Teaching (education.gov.uk)

So, it is permissible according to the government, to never be in school when the pupils are not present except for the five compulsory days required. Those days were originally known as ‘Baker Days’ after the Secretary of State that mandated their requirement.

Of course, the DfE site doesn’t say anything about the length of the school day, and the marking and preparation time spent in the evenings, at weekends, and during the alleged holiday period that make up a teacher’s typical working day.

A more useful analyses of the working year might add the following days – assuming the five days pupils are not present account for all the days immediately pre and post the three terms of the year – to the 195 total.

Two hours a day during term-time on marking and preparation and meetings outside a working day of a period between eight am until four pm would add more than a day a week to the total taking it from 195 days (DfE number) by adding an extra 38 days a year meaning the working year would then be 233 days a year compared with the DfE calculation of 227 as an average for an office worker of an unspecified grade. Now, make that an average of three hours a day – probably not unreasonable for most weeks – and the total moves to around 250 days a year.

The length of the working day and the compensation for the length of the working day isn’t something mentioned on the DfE recruitment site. Find a teaching job with no planning – all done for you – and no marking needed outside of the school day – and there are still parents’ evening to attend that can add four days to the total – one half days for each year group plus one for the new intake, plus perhaps a couple of marketing evenings to showcase the school to potential pupils and their parents. Then there are after-school activities ranging from supervising the buses in the car park to accompanying teams to sports fixture, music and drama events and science competitions.

It is difficult to see how a teacher that wants to do their job properly can manage less than 227 days a year.

On top of this, most other workers have been gaining bank holidays over the years, whereas most additional days have fallen within existing school holidays, except for the Bank Holiday at the beginning of May each year. In 2017, the Labour Party suggested the need for four extra bank holidays Bank holidays for teachers? | John Howson (wordpress.com) that suggestion would not have benefitted teachers at all.

So, if told teachers have long holiday, and remember that the DfE says so, remind people that teachers work a form of employer-driven flexitime that means most teachers work longer on average than many other employees, although they do still have job security in most cases and there is the pension to consider.

Workload matters

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The NfER has issued the third in their series of research updates on teacher recruitment and retention https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/NUFS04/ – scroll down the page for the download of the report.

The headline finding is that ‘on average, teachers’ pay doesn’t increase after they leave’. The authors suggest that this means leavers are not primarily motivated by increased pay. ‘Teachers appear to be more motivated by improved job satisfaction, reduced working hours and more opportunities for flexible working’. This research chimes with my long-held view that there are three key factors in ensuring sufficiency in the teacher workforce: pay; conditions and morale. A government might be able to underplay one element, but to affect all three is to ensure a teacher supply crisis by increasing departure rates to a level where numbers leaving cannot be replaced by new entrants.

Looking deeper into the NfER research, it is interesting to see the three groups used on page 5 of the report as the main outcomes for departure. 43% of leavers from state schools remain in schools, with the bulk switching to teach in the private sector. Only 1.6% in the NfER study become teaching assistants. This is low compared to the 15% NfER found in another study using a different cohort of interviewees.

Overall, only 10% of teacher leavers went into other employment, with a further 5% becoming self-employed. This latter group are rather confusingly included in the economically inactive group of outcomes in this study. If anything, this whole group may be a smaller proportion than in the past when there were more active local advisory and inspection teams and more money was being spend on supporting professional development and research creating more job opportunities. However, there will always be a need for some people with a teaching background to move into other careers. As with the switch to teaching in private schools, it would have been helpful to try to assess whether the percentages discovered in this survey were increasing or declining over recent times?

Finally, the percentage leaving the labour market and becoming economically inactive amounted to 49% of the total, with retirement account for 29% of the total for this group. Perhaps more significant was the 4% that reported being unemployed. Was this due to a partner’s move to an area where there were fewer teaching opportunities or down to having had enough of teaching as a career and taking stock before moving on? More analysis of this group would be illuminating, especially their profile and locations.

What is clear, as the National Audit Office reported earlier this year in their report, is that reducing departures from the profession helps alleviate the need to train more new entrants. The NfER research might have made it clearer that their study used data from a period when secondary school rolls were falling; it is interesting that they don’t have a category for ‘made redundant’, perhaps these teachers are in the ‘unemployed’ group.

With school rolls now on the increase, the messages from this research takes on a greater urgency and, as others have said, the use of part-time working opportunities for an increasingly female dominate classroom teacher workforce in secondary schools is becoming an area where schools now need to pay particular attention to what they can offer staff as it may help to retain some teachers. But, on the evidence of this study, the gain won’t be large. Even so, it is a necessary move.

 

 

Working harder, working smarter and generally longer

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The DfE has just published its latest workload survey for teachers in primary and secondary schools. Not sure what happened to the special school sector. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-workload-survey-2016 The survey was undertaken during the spring term of 2016 in order to make it as comparable as possible to the 2013 TALIS Survey produced by the OECD.

In the 1990s and 2000s, there were a series of dairy studies of workload conducted by the STRB. This report suggests that diary studies had relatively poor response rates because they were time consuming to complete. However, only 3,186 school teachers and leaders completed this easier 2016 survey: a response rate of 34%. In the 2000 diary survey, the response rate was 78% for schools and at 3,394 some 87% of teachers. Although the later series of dairy surveys may have produced lower responses, those in the 1990s seem more robust. Of course, both dairy surveys and other surveys not actually conducted as an activity is taking place, do rely to an extent on perception of time spent on an activity.

The 2016 survey report concluded:

.. some increase in workload has been seen between 2013 and 2016. As per prior workload studies, primary classroom teachers and middle leaders self-reported higher total working hours in the reference week (a mean of 55.5 hours) than teachers in secondary schools (53.5 hours). Primary teachers were also more likely to report total working hours in the reference period of more than 60 hours. As a result, teachers in the primary phase faced more workload pressures.

It is interesting to compare the latest data with those of the 1990 diary studies

WORKING HOURS OF TEACHERS
PRIMARY 1994 1996 2000 2016
HEAD 55.4 55.7 58.9
DEPUTY 52.4 54.5 56.2
SENIOR LEADERS 59.8
MIDDLE LEADERS 57.7
CLASSROOM 48.8 50.8 52.8 55.2
SECONDARY
HEAD 61.1 61.7 60.8
DEPUTY 56.9 56.5 58.6
SENIOR LEADERS 62.1
HEAD DEPT 50.7 53 52.9 55.6
CLASSROOM 48.9 50.3 51.3 52.6
SPECIAL
CLASSROOM 47.5 50 51.2
SOURCES STRB DIARY SURVEYS 1994; 1996; 2000
DfE 2017 WORKLOAD SURVEY

Compared with the 1990s, teaching does seem to be a more onerous occupation, with longer hours spent on work during the reference period. That raises the question as to whether this extra workload is spread across the year of just contained in the spring term. I am sure secondary teachers would insist that greater demands are placed upon them throughout the year now they are fully responsible for the learning of every child and not just every class. They also face demands to be present when exam result at A level and GCSE are released during the summer holidays: probably not a task undertaken by as many teachers twenty years ago.

Primary teachers may have initially benefited from the introduction of PPA time and the designation of certain tasks as ‘not for teachers’ during the discussions over workload in the mid-200s, but whether because of greater assessment pressures, or just larger classes, their working hours seem to have increased by the time of the 2016 survey.

Interestingly, when comparing the 2000 and 2016 studies, primary classroom teachers now spend more time teaching than in 2000. This is despite the introduction of PPA time and accounts for most of the difference in working hours as non-teaching activities have only increased from 32.3 hours to 33.2 hours during the reference weeks; probably within the margin of error.

For secondary teachers the greater increase is in non-teaching hours. This is not surprising, as the pupil-teacher ratio overall in the secondary sector is still generally more favourable than in the late 1990s. The planning, preparation and assessment are probably the areas where more is now demanded of secondary teachers and these tasks cannot be achieved in teaching time.

On the face of these results, teachers are working harder than twenty years ago. If this is generally the case throughout the year, and these doesn’t seem to be anything to make the reference weeks look atypical, then the government will have to consider whether the curious form of employer-drive flexi-time teachers work is now making the job unattractive with regard to both recruiting and, even more importantly, retaining teachers at the classroom level. This is especially true in a period when overall remuneration levels in teaching are probably no longer keeping pace with comparable private sector graduate jobs in all except the least well paid sectors.

Finally, the study should give pay to the canard about long holidays. Indeed, it would be interesting to do a diary study for a so-called holiday period to see on how many days a committed teaching professional actually managed to ignore the demands of the job.

With pressure on funding at the national level, and increasing pupil numbers, this report on workload is not good news for the government. It is also one what they cannot ignore.