Loose Women talking about teachers' holidays

correction: After being made redundant, at the age of around 52 I felt I wanted to do something more meaningful ....................

If everything is so brilliant being a teacher, why do so many leave the profession within a few years?

I worked for several years as a legal secretary in a number of small towns and then, laterally, in Central London. In London, my salary was very good, working conditions were excellent - free hot drinks throughout the day, well priced and top quality restaurant, - a comfortable working space, spotless toilet facilities including showers, etc etc - and a lavish annual May Ball and Christmas events - all free.

At the age of around 52 I felt I wanted to do something more meaningful, and spent three years training to be an adult literacy teacher, including attending college/the Institute of Education on day release and getting on-site work experience.

The adults I taught were delightful and eager to learn but still the work was very taxing. I had to prepare a scheme of work for each term, lesson plans for each learning session, together with materials, reports on each learner's progress, etc, etc. My husband eventually pointed out to me that, if I took into account all the work I had to put in at home, I was probably working for about £5 an hour! It was exhausting too.

Bearing in mind that I was working with adult students who were very appreciative and eager to learn, I can't imagine how much stress there must be for teachers who sometimes have to deal with troubled and/or unruly pupils who continually disrupt lessons - and sometimes difficult parents/carers also.

I hope most people recognise that teachers who stay in the profession must be truly dedicated. It annoys me to hear people going on about their holidays. They don't know the half of it.

After being made redundant

Teachers salaries might look quite good, but they can be working unpaid well into the night preparing lessons, checking pupil's work and filling in numerous assessments. Also a teacher in a junior school might be expected to spend a whole Saturday unpaid taking a football team to a match 50 miles away.
I was asked when I was in my early twenties if I considered teacher training, but all the extra work they had to put in for no pay and the stress involved in the job put me off. I had a friend who was a teacher for ten years and had to leave the profession due to stress and burnout.

Daddima

I agree that it is certainly not a 9-3.30 job, and teachers deserve their holidays, but I do also feel there is a bit of exaggeration of the extra hours teachers spend on non class contact time. Some examples I see make it sound as if teachers never get any time off!
I’ve worked in schools for many years, and many teachers, especially in the SEN classes I worked in, did spend lots of their own time ( and money) on resources, but certainly not ‘ all hours of the day and night’.
Also, depending on your subject in secondary classes, there are various trips and outings teachers are expected to attend outwith term time. My son has just come here after doing prep and assessments which took him until 10pm, but that doesn’t happen regularly. He also had to take a party of seniors to London for a week, albeit in term time, but still hardly a holiday!

Clearly I don't know what you did in school, or what age gp school you were in, but I'm not sure exactly what your point is regarding 'I do also feel there is a bit of exaggeration of the extra hours teachers spend on non class contact time'. Personally I knew of management and admin folk in school who had little idea how many hours teachers put in, what time they arrived in the morning and obviously no idea of the hours spent working at home
Teacher contracts may refer to a 35-hour directed week (or a 32.5 hour minimum). Surveys indicate full-time teachers work an average of 49.5 to 52 hours per week during term-time. Unions highlight that excessive workload often exceeds 50 hours, leading to retention problems. Most teachers work evenings and/or weekends, with plenty reporting 10-13 hours of unpaid overtime per week.
40,000 teachers leave every year, 35,000 of whom are not retiring. There are more qualified teachers of working age not involved in education than there are working in schools & colleges.

Loose women... let's just say empty vessels make the most noise. That programme is dreadful and I'm being polite here, I would be banned if I wasn't.
I worked as a special needs TA for 14 years in a secondary school and it is a complete myth that teaching staff and a lot of support staff get loads of free time in the holidays and leaving work at 3:30pm... they may leave the building at 3:30pm but work is never finished much before midnight most days and then their weekends are rarely all their own either.

Loose Women is only going to be shown 30 weeks of the year now, instead of 50. This means these very well paid " Loose Women" can have 20 weeks a year off to do what they want and probably make some extra cash appearing on celebrity game shows. This programme is utter rubbish and they probably think teachers finish school at 3.30 every day and head off to the pub.

Unless you’ve only recently retired from teaching, your knowledge of what the job involves will not be based on current practice.
When I started, attacks by children were rare and parents were supportive. Now the attacks come from both children and parents.
There’s increasing need to parent children as well as teaching them,
e.g. those who aren’t toilet trained, or have problems with communication or who can’t dress themselves properly.
Increasing numbers with SEND who either have support for whom the teacher needs to add planning or need support.

Just recently I dealt with a parent who demanded quite forcibly that, “Those boys should be kept away from my child! Why don’t you keep them in at playtime then he wouldn’t be in trouble for ‘play fighting’.
Followed by the usual threat of “If you don’t, I’m going to the Head and the governors and then you’ll have to do something.”

That on top of the differentiated planning, planning for support staff, the assessment against a multitude of different criteria for English and Maths in particular and the “useful” comments from OFSTED like
“You’ve got too many children in the computer suite. Why don’t you leave half of them in the classroom?”

VerbenaGirl

I know several teachers - both primary and secondary. They work incredibly hard and have a huge responsibility upon them.

So do many other jobs and proffesions. Burn out also happens in lots of different jobs.

Daddima

I agree that it is certainly not a 9-3.30 job, and teachers deserve their holidays, but I do also feel there is a bit of exaggeration of the extra hours teachers spend on non class contact time. Some examples I see make it sound as if teachers never get any time off!
I’ve worked in schools for many years, and many teachers, especially in the SEN classes I worked in, did spend lots of their own time ( and money) on resources, but certainly not ‘ all hours of the day and night’.
Also, depending on your subject in secondary classes, there are various trips and outings teachers are expected to attend outwith term time. My son has just come here after doing prep and assessments which took him until 10pm, but that doesn’t happen regularly. He also had to take a party of seniors to London for a week, albeit in term time, but still hardly a holiday!

I agree Daddima. We have a teacher in our family who refuses to take work home in any circumstances and never does any schoolwork after he has left the building. He works a reasonably long day
(8-5), with extra sometimes for late meetings, parents evening etc. He also refuses to spend his own money on anything that he considers to be ‘supplies’.
He is earning £50k and accumulating a good pension. Overall, I don’t think he is working any harder than anyone else I know.

I do think it is a tough job - you can never have an ‘off’ or a down day as students give you absolutely no respite. I don’t begrudge teachers their holidays, as they are exhausted after six weeks non-stop. I know it’s frustrating not to be able to take time off during term time, but I think that’s a fair exchange for the amount of holiday that teachers get.

DD used to be a teacher, but had to give it up because it’s just not possible for schools to make adequate adjustments for people with disabilities a lot of the time, and worsening health issues meant that she couldn’t continue. One of the things she found really hard to get used to was only having a limited amount of leave. And when she is on holiday, the emails keep piling up in her inbox, so there’s a lot of catch up to do when you go back into work. When teachers are on holiday, their business is effectively closed, and they don’t have this problem. They never have to worry about what might be happening when they are not at work.

As a separate issue, I think that generally the HR standards in schools is shocking. There is an awful lot of bullying of teachers by managers. Too many teachers leave during their first year because of bullying of this kind. The ‘staff room’ often seems like only one step up from the playground. The process by which teachers apply for new jobs is really bad too, as you have to let your existing school know if you want to apply for a job elsewhere - can you imagine that being the case anywhere else? And too many teachers are on temporary contracts which are often not renewed. Access to sick pay etc is often poor.

It’s not getting easier for teachers with the introduction of the academy systems, some of which are now owned by private companies. They are always trying to cut costs, reducing the use of supply teachers and removing the non-teaching time that teachers rely on for planning, marking etc. I don’t think many people realise the extent to which state education in the UK has been privatised. If it was happening to the NHS, people would be out in the streets, but the kind of sneaking privatisation that has happened in state education has largely gone unnoticed.

I know several teachers - both primary and secondary. They work incredibly hard and have a huge responsibility upon them.

Lathyrus3

Have you had a look at the Conditions of Service for 2025?

Sorry, I've been out on DGD school pick up and tea time, so wanted to get back home first to sit down at my big computer, not on my phone.
I was looking at the Burgundy Book for 2023 when I was last involved in teaching and it was down to 193 days maybe to take the Queen's funeral into account that year? Yes, it is now back up to 195, that's 190 to teach and 5 to perform duties. Thank you.
But that's still only 9 months a year.

I would hope that teachers retiring or leaving the profession don't all do so with nightmarish memories of the job because there's an awful lot of good things about it to be thankful for.

1 in 10 teachers left teaching last year .

I’ve just retired as a nursery teacher and miss the children but definitely not the extra bits.

Have you had a look at the Conditions of Service for 2025?

We were buying supplies in France, watching parents over there having to buy the same supplies for their own children because school didn’t supply them.
France is an interesting one because families there are means tested to see if they qualify for the allocation de rentrée scolaire. I believe approximately 3 million families receive this grant which is around €450 per child, depending on age, each academic year. It is given to multiple children within these families, so no small number. If you're on holiday over there in August you will notice supermarkets with a couple of weeks of promotions for the return to school and parents filling their trollies with stuff for school.
French schools do not supply stationery, school bags and personal equipment but textbooks are provided free.

Daddima, I taught English. I often had 2 exam classes, occasionally 3. It takes hours to mark and comment on essays and RUA which are reading for understanding and analysis papers. Then folio work which meeds marked
and assessment work. And prelim marking. 30 pupils in each class. And that doesn't count the other classes. Trust me when I say it took hours. After 25 years teaching, I was able to streamline how I did it. English teachers and history teachers are hit hard with the amount of marking. Other subjects have their own issues. That was what the reality was for me. Still is, when I talk to ex colleagues.
I was in Scotland

There are indeed lots of jobs that have the “any other hours” clause. DH’s job was one.

However he didn’t take his work on holiday with him, spending time and money on resources either 1. to make his job more interesting for those he worked with or 2. to provide supplies that school didn’t.
You could argue that 1. was optional, but 2. certainly wasn’t.
We were buying supplies in France, watching parents over there having to buy the same supplies for their own children because school didn’t supply them.

I expect the poster who had their own school provided sufficiently so the staff had no need to supplement.
That doesn’t change how much out of hours time that teaching involves for marking, assessment and subsequent planning, and preparation, or the fact that they always have to take holidays at the most expensive times.
Most teachers who stay in the job do because they enjoy the teaching aspect. They don’t have to enjoy all the additional tasks that appear, year on year, or the attacks by parents.

Maybe are you in Scotland? They might be different.

I think if you look at Teachers Pay and Conditions 2025
you will see it is 190 days contact teaching
+ 5 training
+ whatever additional time is necessary to fulfil professional duties.

I’ve never known anyone deterred by the time required to be in the classroom.

Most quit because of the extent and workload of the other “professional duties”.

That’s what needs to be tackled to deal with the massive problem of retention.

I’ll take a look.

I Googked it so went on what came up there.

Maybe you think my Maths was the wrong on the 5 days inset Lathyrus, but I dont think so. It is in fact 193 days a year, (amended from 195 in 2022), 188 are pupil facing days, the other 5 inset. I suggest you look at the dfe Scool teachers pay and conditions document, 2023. If I am wrong, I will happily be corrected, but it's there in black and white.

Anyway, this is still 13 weeks, 3 months, holiday each year, compared with 5 weeks. PPA time must be at least 10% of the teachers' teaching time and a teacher must not be required to carry out other duties during this time.
I repeat, no one is saying teachers don’t work hard, but they are fortunate in the amount of holiday time they get.

Any job of responsibility would require additional hours to fulfil the rôle. DS has a managerial job that is a 35 days a week contract, yet he works a 10 hour day, 5 days a week.

To Sazz1 - I couldn't agree more. My DD is exactly the same situation as yours. Jane Moore on Loose Women feels qualified to comment on this because her mother was a teacher! When? Teaching today is probably unrecognizable from her mother's era. Ms Moore should stick to writing her inane column in a tabloid rather than spouting off about something she has very little knowledge of.

Lathyrus3

I have to correct you there, MartavTaurus.

Teachers are required to teach that is have direct contact with students - for 195 each year.

The 5 INSET days are not included in this.

The contract then requires them to work work additional hours “ whatever is reasonably necessary to fulfil the role.”

Therein lies the problem. There is no limit to the hours and workload.

The increased paperwork in education and expansion of responsibilities to social and health work, have expanded the made the role and made it impossible to fulfil.

Every good manager knows that’s no way to motivate staff.

‘ Whatever is reasomably necessary to fulfil the role’

This is very like what is often the last entry in many job descriptions, ‘ Any other duties deemed necessary by the management’!
* GrandmaBatty* Did you really spend EVERY evening and weekend marking? That seems excessive.
Teachers I know will often spend time outwith school hours collecting and preparing resources, but they will tell you that it makes their lessons more productive, thereby increasing their own job satisfaction.

Loose Women - they have NO IDEA on thos one!

I have to correct you there, MartavTaurus.

Teachers are required to teach that is have direct contact with students - for 195 each year.

The 5 INSET days are not included in this.

The contract then requires them to work work additional hours “ whatever is reasonably necessary to fulfil the role.”

Therein lies the problem. There is no limit to the hours and workload.

The increased paperwork in education and expansion of responsibilities to social and health work, have expanded the made the role and made it impossible to fulfil.

Every good manager knows that’s no way to motivate staff.