I have been thinking long and hard over the festive period. One thing that always exercises me is the amount of unpaid hours teachers (and other public servants) do in order to stand still.
The last survey of teacher over-working concluded the following: “The EIS Fortnight Focus on Workload survey found the average primary school teacher spent 9.3 hours on preparation and correction, where the contractual position for a full-time teacher sets aside 7.5 hours.
In addition, planning took, on average, 3.4 hours per week for primary teachers, assessment took 1.3 hours and reporting consumed 2.3 hours of a teachers' time.
In secondary schools, teachers spent 8.5 hours on preparation and correction, 2.5 hours planning, 2.7 hours on assessment and 1.5 hours on curricular development.” (A)
We are not alone in this matter with pre-COVID NHS staff doing over 2 hours per week unpaid overtime and Civil Servants 7 hours on average. (B, C)
Perhaps it is the sense of vocation or the feeling of being part of a national improvement agenda that motivates public servants to do more than necessary, but it may be time to recognise that working beyond your contract is toxic. It covers up deficiencies in the system and steals from your personal interests and family time. This compresses your time available for recovery and personal regeneration. This time is essential to make sure you are physically and mentally healthy enough to attend school and give of your best.
If I take the average 10 hours per week as a reasonable marker of the overwork we donate to education, this can be viewed in several ways.
This is you working 28.6% beyond contractual time.
Effectively, every four teachers doing this is preventing the creation of another FTE post.
If this were recognised, our 54000 staff complement would be 67500 teachers. That is 13500 FTE jobs that could really help schools provide excellence and equity!
You are reducing your hourly rate to 78% of what it should be.
Psychologically, you are consenting to the management view that teacher time and energy is elastic.
Leaders in education feel empowered to incrementally add more and more to your workload.
We are condoning the status of teaching as being endemically a profession of stress, mental illness and limitless acquiescence.
It normalises overwork - a terrible example for pupils.
Some may argue, with merit, that our Working Time Agreements protect us against this. It would be interesting to see if any research has been done into this matter. Certainly the communications we have within the world of the SSTA would suggest that the final WTA is often viewed by management as a starting point for a base level of work by staff.
Is there a solution?
Well, we certainly seem to be living in an era of super-austerity where a Government wilfully aims to reduce the size of the State for ideological reasons. They do not care about the damage done because they are aware that public servants and teachers will back-fill, in-fill and work their socks off to place sticking plaster after sticking plaster on the wounds.
But there is a cost to physical health, mental health and family life for these sacrifices. Perhaps it is time that we truly became a professional profession and declared that ‘we will do everything within our skillset to deliver excellence and equity for our young people - within the time, support and resources supplied to do so.”
‘The time’ has to be 35 hours per week.
‘The support’ must include easy to access support, coursework and assessments.
‘The resources’ should match the aspirations of teacher requirements for excellence and equity.
Perhaps HGIOS and the GTCS Standards could reflect this by including an overarching statement at each indicator that recognised that staff need the time, support and resources to achieve their aims.
Otherwise, our own body, that was “established to ensure standards for the teaching profession in Scotland” (D) is part of a problem that is widely known, widely accepted yet rarely discussed in an evidentiary manner.
Indeed, the GTCS’s welcome contribution to the National Conversation seems to recognise this, “Whilst there have been references to this being a once in a lifetime opportunity to shape our education system, no dedicated time and space has been provided for teachers to participate.” (D)
So, teachers do it in their own time, if they have the time because they are already doing 28.6% of their job in their own time.
This observation above from the GTCS is welcome but should go further with a commitment to attaching Standards to the required time, support and resources required to achieve them.
In HGIOS, there are 15 Quality Indicators, sub-divided into 48 Sub-Indicators. Only one indicator hints at a need for resources but, in reality, in meanders around using leadership psycho-babble instead of pragmatic illustrations of resources needed.
In fact, HMIE seem to be devoid of advice on what level of associated time, support or resources are required to overcome their objectives.
QI 1.5 MANAGEMENT OF RESOURCES TO PROMOTE EQUITY wanders around the issue of resource management but fails to illustrate the danger of a vastly decreased budget allocation to schools in the last 12 years. If resources can improve outcomes, surely a reduction in resources impacts negatively? “How effectively do we allocate resources to sustain improvement priorities?” (E)
The answer to the preceding question is “what resources?”
Theoretically, a one person school could have one member of staff having to cover every objective while a massive secondary could have 8-10 managers trying to fulfil this task. That is not excellent nor equitable. (E)
It is noted however, that no headline QI mentions time, support or resources for staff to achieve success. The assumption is that staff, as a resource, are elastic.
QI 3.1 ENSURING WELLBEING, EQUALITY AND INCLUSION. Surely this indicator should be used to compare budgets, spending per head (teachers and pupils) and CPD budgets between schools within and without Local Authorities? This could then be used by comparator schools to evidence possible reasons why attainment and achievement differs from what may ostensibly seem to be similar backgrounds. A colleague also suggested that, "All staff and partners are sensitive and responsive to the wellbeing of each individual child and colleague."
Should be made more explicit and allow for a school to be downgraded or upgraded based on how teachers are supported.
Finally, in the absence of any momentum from our Leadership class in Scottish Education, it may just be time that staff stood up for themselves and said, ‘Enough Is Enough! You are damaging my health and impacting on pupil outcomes.’
It may just be time to work with the time, support and resources provided. It would be nice if the GTCS Standards and HGIOS reflected the reality of modern day classroom teaching.
Paul Cochrane SSTA Convenor - Salaries and Working Conditions
A. EIS Survey https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32926585
11 hrs per week extra unpaid
2.1-3.0 hrs per week
C. Civil Servants 2017 https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/civil-servants-work-more-unpaid-overtime-than-private-sector-staff
7 hours per week
D. GTCS Response to National Conversation https://www.gtcs.org.uk/news/gtc-scotland-contribution-to-national-discussion-on-scottish-education/
E. HGIOS
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