Who knows whether a teacher told you they work 100 hrs or not. I doubt it though HRS.

I think you're a huge story teller.

HRS,

The maximum weekly teaching load in a Victorian secondary schools is 20 hours. The high school maximum was a legally guaranteed 18 hours, but the 1992 government passed retrospective legislation to tear up the contract that set that limit. On top of the teaching, there are preparation, correction, interviews, meetings, yard duty, professional reading, etc.

I suggest that you read a year 7 novel, take notes while you do so on plot, character, theme, language, etc., plan a series of lessons on that novel, set some questions and devise some essay topics. Record how long this takes you. If you were a teacher, you might need to do this each term. You would have to do it again for your year 8 class, your year 9 class, your year 11 class and your year 12 class. It is extremely unlikely that you would have more than five English classes. In some cases, you would be able to rely on the same novel that you have taught before or you may have two classes at the same level, but neither of these situations is as common as it should be.

Once you have set the questions and the essay, you have to correct them. How long would it take you to read 25 essays of say 300 words at year 7 or 600 words at year 11 and put comments on them and record the marks in your markbook? Multiply that time by the number of classes you have (probably five).

Then take a stab at the time required to devise a comprehension exercise, produce a lesson on grammar or punctuation (yes, they are still taught), conduct an interview with a parent, read through applications for jobs, sit on an interview panel, go to the required meetings, do your yard duty, prepare material for your pointless review, conduct the review of someone else, keep up to date with the latest change in curriculum or reporting, etc.

It all takes time, and I haven’t even started on the specific tasks in a leadership position outside of the classroom.

Liz,
I do not lie, I’m not a feminist. Unlike yourself, I’ll also answer questions. Ask me a question, and I’ll give you an answer. That is how honest I am.

The teacher who told me that they were working 100hrs per week was undertaking a small business course. They were about to start their own business because they said they were working too many hours as a teacher. I don’t think they had any idea of what long working hours were like.

Chris C,
I have heard just about everything from teachers. I have heard that teachers work everything from 40 to 100 hrs per week. I think they should pick on a figure and stick with that one figure.

HRS,

It is not a matter of teachers’ picking a figure and sticking to it. If some work a 40-hour week and others a 60-hour week, a 50-hour average makes sense, and the last average I saw from surveys was over 50 hours. Teachers should generally work the 38-hour week specified in their award, instead of allowing themselves to be exploited, but teachers tend to be industrially and politically naïve and expect the fairy godmother to come along and make their lives better.

Victorian MAWOTE were $1107.30 in November last year (ABS 6302.0, November 2006).

In 1975, after seven years a teacher reached the top of the scale and was paid 166.6 per cent of MAWOTE. That equals $1844.76 today, or $48.55 an hour for a 38-hour week. Divide today’s weekly salary of about $1107 for that same teacher by the $48.55 rate will show that teacher is paid for, and therefore should be working, only 22.8 hours a week. In other words, the average teacher is doing about 28 hours unpaid work per week.

As you indicated some scepticism about how much teachers work, I suggested an activity you could undertake so that you might understand how much work is actually involved in teaching. The work does not end when a teacher leaves the classroom or the school.

Allow me to enlighten you on some of what a timetabler actually does - constant meetings with subject co-ordinators, level co-ordinators, sub-school co-ordinators, the principal, individual teachers; timing of blocks so that rooms, part-time teachers, external timing constraints, distribution of lessons across the timetable cycle ( a week, a fortnight, even three weeks in some absurd schools); allocation of classes based on teacher wishes, co-ordinators’ wishes, part-time attendance and available slots, etc; doing clash matrices; resolving clashes; preparing planning and timetable reports; printing and distributing timetables – and all of this can be done ten times a year. If you haven’t done it, you will not appreciate how complex, challenging and time-consuming the task is, even with computers which perform millions of calculations for you.

C. J Morgan
The article is about teachers and summer school for teachers. In posts I have mentioned teachers and summer school for teachers, but I have not mentioned mothers, nor have I mentioned women.

In fact the words “mothers” and “women” do not appear in any posts made by anyone, so maybe you are having difficulties reading.

Have you ever thought of attending a summer school?

Chris C
50 hours a week seems an accurate enough figure, and also an average type figure, as I understand that the average male in Australia with dependant children works about 49 hours a week.

So that clarifies how many hours a teacher is likely to work per week (on average), but teachers also have many more weeks holiday per year than the average worker.

I understand that teachers want more money, so they could work more weeks per year to get extra money, and this can include attending summer schools to upgrade their qualifications.

But of course it has to be judged how effective these summer schools actually are. The best way of determining that is to see if student marks improve, but I think that topic was covered in another article by the author.

There is much confusion in relation to what the Coalition is trying to achieve with their Summer Schools. At a school where a relative teaches, there was a cry of you beauty in relation to Summer School, as the teachers felt that they could pursue development of their personal interests in their subject areas. However, they later learnt that it would only be available to particular nominated teachers and only English and Maths would be concentrated on at the Summer School. My question was what about Science, and they did not seem to know.

Clearly, the Coalition is singling out particular subject areas; it suggests that only Maths and English are the only important cirriculum areas.
Teachers who complete the Summer School are meant to go back to their Schools and teach the staff what they have learnt. The relative suggested that it would be like teaching many teachers how to suck eggs.

Lets face it, the Coalition is involved in administering Education; they have no expertise in how to teach. How many more times are we to think in relation to the Coalition and their current plans; that it seemed like a good idea at the time.