Teachers Want 35 Hour Week

Teachers in England and Wales are expected to vote for industrial action on Monday unless the government begins moves towards a 35-hour week.

The unions are all demanding a maximum working week of 35 hours, maximum classroom time of 22.5 hours and a salary structure which would allow most teachers to reach a wage of £35,000.

The Government's Education Secretary, David Blunkett, has said the public was unlikely to sympathise with teachers wanting to work a 35-hour week when they got such long holidays.

It's An Outrage!!

Damn right we'd unlikely to sympathise!!

Teachers in England get the following holidays;

• 1 week in February (Half Term)
  

• 2 weeks at Easter
  
• 1 week in May (Spring bank Holiday)
  
• 6 weeks in Summer
  
• 1 week in October (Half Term)
  
• 2 weeks at Christmas
  

• this equates to 13 weeks of holidays!!

So, with most other workers getting 4 weeks of holiday across the WHOLE YEAR, they are already 9 weeks up on the rest of us.

And, doing a quick bit of maths, a 35 hour week means 7 hours per day, which means starting at 08:30 and finishing at 15:30.

Isn't that exactly the length of the children's school day? And isn't it 1.5 hours less than office workers? And when will they do their marking, lesson preparation, extra-curricular activity?

Stretching my maths skills to their limit (it has been after all, over a dozen years since I left school!), you get the following;

• 52 weeks minus 13 weeks of holidays = 39 weeks at work
  

• 39 weeks of 35 hours = 1365 hours at work per year
  
• £35,000 across 1365 hours = £25.64 per hour at work

Now that seems like a mighty fine hourly rate to me!!

Unions say that some teachers are already doing 50 hour weeks, and that this will combat that problem. I say, rubbish. My working week is 37.5 hours a week, but I almost never do that few hours. Just like most other people I know, I do the hours that the job dictates.

I have every symathy for teachers who have to deal with disruptive, unruly, dangerous children, but that's one of the hazards of the profession and they know that before they go into it. Teaching is a vocation, and not just a job.

Do it right, or don't do it at all.

(My dad's fully in favour of a 35 hour week for teachers though - he says anything to increase the number of hours they currently work must be a good thing...)