Report finds teachers under pressure
26 Mar 2008
“Demands on teachers have increased beyond their capacity to meet them”
A report by the University of Cambridge, presented to the National Union of Teachers annual conference in Manchester says that: “Demands on teachers have increased beyond their capacity to meet them”.
The report Pressure and Professionalism found that teachers are required to deal with large quantities of paperwork and reconcile competing demands on their time. Teachers’ working weeks have also increased, claims the report, following the series of ‘remodelling’ initiatives by school ministers, which were originally designed to reduce their workloads.
While headteachers and senior staff face increased management tasks and the implementation of policy initiatives, teaching assistants are often running classes while teachers deal with more routine tasks.
The report’s authors, Professors John MacBeath and Maurice Galton from Cambridge University’s Faculty of Education, revisited schools which took part in previous surveys in 2002, 2004 and 2006 to see if workload initiatives had been successful. They found that working hours hadn’t changed over the past five years, and in some cases had increased. Primary teachers were found to be working around 56 hours in a typical week.
The workforce reforms have been ‘palliative’ said the report’s authors, ‘but they have not improved teachers’ work-life balance’. They said: “For heads, 12-hour days are not uncommon, weekends usually involve school-related work and extended holidays are a distant memory.”
The study also found increased problems with discipline in primary schools compared with 2002. Teachers complained of a minority of ‘highly permissive parents’ who made it harder to enforce rules in the classroom.
