Teacher workload

A full-time classroom teacher in a maintained school in England can be directed to work for 1,265 hours a year, spread over 195 days: 190 days with pupils and 5 other days. That figure is only the time your head can direct you to be in a particular place doing particular work. The School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) also requires teachers to work the “reasonable additional hours” needed to do the job well, such as marking and planning, and those hours have no fixed cap. That gap between directed time and real working time is where most teacher workload problems sit.

What directed time covers

Directed time is the time your headteacher can tell you to be available for work, at a time and place they choose. It normally includes:

• teaching timetabled lessons
• registration and form time
• planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time at school
• staff meetings, departmental meetings and INSET days
• parents’ evenings and open evenings
• duties such as break or lunch supervision, if your school directs them

Schools should publish a directed time budget at the start of the year showing how the 1,265 hours are used. If yours does not, ask for it. Added up properly, a school with a long day, weekly meetings and several evening events can be close to the limit.

What sits outside directed time

Most of what teachers say makes the job hard happens outside directed time: marking at home, lesson planning in the evening, writing reports, answering parent emails, preparing data drops and catching up on behaviour or safeguarding paperwork. The STPCD treats this as part of the reasonable additional hours that professional duties need. It does not set a number.

The law gives a backstop. Under the Working Time Regulations, workers should not average more than 48 hours a week over 17 weeks unless they have opted out in writing. Teachers’ term-time weeks are long, but because holidays bring the average down, the 48-hour limit is rarely the thing that protects a teacher in practice.

PPA time and other protections

Teachers in England are entitled to guaranteed PPA time within the timetable, as a share of their teaching time set in the STPCD. It is timetabled during the school day, and the teacher decides how to use it. The school should not fill it with cover or meetings.

The STPCD also sets out:

• that teachers should not routinely do administrative and clerical tasks that do not need a teacher’s professional skills
• that teachers with leadership or management responsibilities should have time to carry them out
• that headteachers must have regard to teachers’ work-life balance

Academies set their own pay and conditions, but many adopt the STPCD or something close to it. Check your contract. Scotland and Wales have their own conditions: teachers in Wales are covered by the STPC(W)D, and in Scotland the SNCT handbook sets working time.

Where the hours go

Workload varies with school, phase, subject and role. Secondary English and humanities teachers tend to carry heavy marking loads. Primary teachers often plan across every subject. Heads of department, heads of year and SENCOs combine teaching with management, data and meetings. Early career teachers have a reduced timetable during induction, but planning everything for the first time takes much longer.

Ofsted inspections and mock inspections add spikes. The guide to Ofsted from a staff perspective covers what inspectors are supposed to look at and what they are not.

Things schools do that reduce workload

Some school policies make a real difference, and they are worth asking about at interview:

• whole-class or verbal feedback instead of detailed written marking on every piece
• shared schemes of work and centrally produced resources
• a limit on emails out of hours, with no expectation of replies at weekends
• fewer data collection points each year
• meetings with a clear purpose, kept within directed time
• PPA time protected from cover

The Department for Education has published workload reduction guidance and an education staff wellbeing charter that schools can sign up to.

When workload becomes too much

Start with the facts. Keep a record of your hours for a few weeks and the tasks that fill them. Compare the school’s directed time with what you are actually asked to attend. This turns a conversation about “feeling overloaded” into one about specific tasks.

Raise it with your line manager or head of department first. If that does not help, talk to your union rep. Teaching unions have school-level reps and can raise workload collectively with the head, which is harder to ignore than one person’s complaint. The guide to trade unions lists the main ones.

If workload is affecting your health, see your GP, use your employee assistance programme or Education Support’s helpline, and read the guide to burnout in public sector jobs. Employers have a legal duty to assess the risk of work-related stress and act on it, and the Health and Safety Executive’s management standards give a framework for that.

Some teachers reduce their hours. Part-time teaching is paid pro rata on the same scales, and you can make a flexible working request from day one in England. Going part-time often cuts pay more than workload, because planning and marking do not shrink in proportion, so agree clearly which meetings and duties you will attend.