Limit teaching to four hours a day, says union
NUT wants teachers' classroom hours capped at 20 a week amid claims many hardly see their own children and work late.
Teachers have called for the time they spend teaching pupils to be capped at 20 hours a week – four hours a day.
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) passed a motion on Tuesday demanding a new working week of 20 hours' teaching time, up to 10 hours of lesson preparation and marking, and five hours of other duties, including time spent inputting data and at parents' evenings.
This would mark a drastic reduction in teachers' hours. In the past year, the number of hours teachers work has dramatically risen as a result of pressure from the government and the school inspectorate, teachers claimed at the NUT's annual conference in Liverpool.
They said they had no time to spend with their children or to eat lunch and complained that they often worked past midnight.
Most primary school teachers work more than 50 hours a week during term time, while secondary school teachers work for about 49 hours, the conference heard.
A current agreement between schools and unions states that teachers should spend time on "any reasonable activity" their headteacher instructs. There is no fixed limit on the number of hours teachers work a week, although full-time staff must be available for just over 32 hours. The contract between unions and schools states that teachers must be available to work "such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of their professional duties".
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... (The Guardian - 2 April)