It’s easy being a teacher – finish at 3pm every day, 13 weeks holiday – what’s all the fuss?
Here is the reality: 22 hours a week teaching, maybe 11 hours to plan half-decent lessons, 5 hours to prepare and tidy up during the working day, 5 hours to make phone calls to parents, enter data and do other administrative tasks, 5 hours marking and maybe 2 hours per week on average for meetings, parents’ evenings and so on.
So that’s 50 hours per week for 39 weeks a year, giving 1950 hours per year. A normal job would be maybe 8 hours a day for 46 weeks per year, totalling 1840 hours. So in fact, teachers work longer hours than most people.
Moreover, those 1950 hours are intense work and don’t include the time that most people would spend at work chatting, texting their mates and making coffee. Of course, teachers do all that as well but have to fit it in around all the other tasks.
Without even looking at the nature of the job, it is clear that teaching is hard work.
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