IN last week’s Guardian, your mystery columnist, The Fly in the Ointment, would like to know about teachers’ working hours.

Teachers working weeks are so long because of the demands that are put on them beyond teaching.

It would be lovely to roll in with the kids at 8.55am, but then you would not have everything ready for their first lesson.

Most teachers get to school a good hour before the children to prep for the morning – photocopying, collecting resources needed, checking lessons plans, meeting with teaching assistants so they know what they are doing in the lesson.

Once the children are in you teach, and I mean teach, long gone are the days when teachers sat at their desks and marked work while the children got on with their task independently.

To move children on teachers deliver their lesson then work with groups to target their learning needs.

It is full-on and by the end of the lesson you need a break.

However, don’t think you are getting one, you’ll be on playground duty, or administering first aid, which then all needs to be recorded.

You get to lunch time and you still might not get a breather, most schools feel the need to offer ‘clubs’ and if you aren’t doing one it is very much frowned upon.

No wonder the afternoon is shorter, teachers would just burn out if they were longer.

So you have got to the end of the school day, children go home.

But not all of them remember you might be doing another of your clubs, going to a sporting event with pupils or you might be having to teach them in booster classes to get the best out of them in SATs.

You now need to mark your books, if there are 30 pupils in your class and you have taught four lessons, which is typical, that’s going to take a while.

Let’s say that each book takes one minute, that has taken you two hours.

The reality is that it takes longer, especially if you are preparing pupils for exams.

Also you need to be setting targets to make sure your marking is effective, does the pupil know what they have done well and how to improve?

But you might not get your marking started straight away because you may well be going to a staff meeting that can last an hour-and-a-half, or you may have to meet with parents.

Parents are now given their teachers’ email address, and you have to respond to all of them. On top of the basics don’t forget to keep display boards current to the learning, you’ll also be in charge of a least one subject to coordinate across the school.

This involves paper work, monitoring teaching in this area, looking at pupils books across the school etc.

You might have training courses after school, or be doing online training. Don’t forget parents evening and fundraising events. You just cannot do the work expected in a 9am to 5pm shift.

Every weekend, every holiday there is work to be done. Teachers need the holidays as much as the pupils, the hours are long, the expectations high and still they want more!

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