09 November 2018

The hefty workloads of British schoolteachers is massively underestimated by members of the public.

This is one of the findings of new research by the Varkey Foundation - an educational charity - which also discovered that teachers in the UK pull the fourth longest hours out of 35 countries surveyed.

The average teacher works 50.9 hours per week, but the public estimated this figure at jst 45.9 - teachers work almost one whole school day more than people think they do.

Further, the British public guessed a teacher’s starting salary to be around £29,000 - £5,000 more than their actual income of £24,000.

Paul Whiteman, General Secretary of the National Association for Head Teachers, which has teamed up with the National Education Union and the Association for School and College Leaders to ballot their combined members for industrial action next week, said austerity had hit teachers hard.

”Not only do teachers in this country work longer hours than their peers around the world, they have also been forced to accept years of real-terms pay cuts,” he said.

”Teachers’ average hourly pay has fallen by 15% over the last decade. And they are working under the pressure of an ever more punitive accountability system where one bad year of test results can destroy a career.”