Do teachers get “excessive” holidays? Hell no.
But a senior Coalition backbencher is arguing just that, saying that teachers should be working eight-hour days and getting only four weeks’ annual leave.
“Teaching needs to operate like other jobs, with the same hours, days and weeks as the rest of the economy, rather than cluttered school hours where there is little beyond the face-to-face time,” Andrew Laming told Fairfax Media.
Laming admitted that some teachers went “above and beyond”, and many teachers put in extra time outside of school hours for marking and preparation, but said this wasn’t measured or assured.
“There is just no evidence that the work they are doing at home makes any difference, and there’s no evidence that what they do at home is actually where you’d want a teacher focusing their efforts,” he said.
Laming thinks teachers should be spending their spare time studying.
The deputy president of the Australian Education Union, Maurie Mulheron, says Laming is “so out of touch” with the reality of what’s happening in teaching.
“I think a lot of teachers would like to actually have an eight-hour working day, given that most of them work far in excess of that,” he tells Mamamia.
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“Most of the research that we’ve done is showing that teachers are working anything up to 50, 60 hour weeks on a regular basis throughout the school year.
“Teachers are working before school, getting very little break during the day, working after hours at school, then working in the evening, which eats into family time, and spending a good part of the weekend on preparation and marking and assessment and a range of other things.”
He says teachers can’t teach successfully without that level of commitment.
“The job is too complex and too difficult if you’re not putting in those kind of hours. It’s a problem that teachers are working so hard and such long hours.”
As for Laming’s proposal that teachers should only be getting four weeks holiday a year, Mulheron points out that teachers are working through their holidays already.
“Most teachers would be lucky to get four weeks where they’re clear of doing schoolwork,” he says.
Mulheron notes that Federal Parliament only sat for 20 weeks last year.
“So if we use his measure, that means he had 32 weeks of the year he didn’t have to report to work,” he adds.
“Maybe in those 32 spare weeks he could use that time to visit schools and get a dose of reality.”
Laming, a Queensland MP, worked as a doctor and a management consultant before entering Parliament. This is not the first time he’s had a dig at teachers. Last year, in mid-January, he posted on Facebook, “Are teachers back at work this week, or are they ‘lesson planning’ from home? Let me know exactly.”
Soon afterwards, PM Malcolm Turnbull, whose daughter Daisy is a schoolteacher, gave Laming a rap over the knuckles, saying his daughter had “some concerns” and he was going to pass them on to the MP.
Clearly, Laming didn’t get the message.
You don’t need to be a teacher, or even have a teacher in the family, to appreciate how hard they work. Anyone who has a child at school can see that teachers are putting in a huge amount of time outside the 9am-3pm school day.
It’s not a regular office job. It’s a profession full of people who want to make a difference to kids’ lives, and they’re working unpaid, unseen hours to do that.
Too many good teachers have already left the profession due to burnout. We don’t want to keep losing them.
Top Comments
My mum is a retired teacher & I can guarantee that she worked her backside off daily, there are never set hours for teachers because there is just so much work required of them!
Mum was at school by 7:30am every day & didn't leave till after 4pm, mum was a dedicated, passionate teacher & probably one of the hardest working people anyone could meet.
It is annoying & disappointing when you hear young people brag that they are going into teaching because of the holidays & presumed work hours (yes I've heard it) because it puts shit on a profession that is so demanding!
I think that last thing you said about current young people is actually a bigger reason why there are bigger numbers of teachers leaving the teaching profession these days. There are definitely problems with what teachers are asked to do, but there are also people looking for what you've described, who quickly realise there is no such thing as a free ride in any job, and that does include teaching. They thought it would be different to what it was, and when realisation hits they drop out (which is probably a good thing for any future kids they may have wound up teaching!).
I agree completely!
Why are teachers treated so differently to other professions in the sympathy they get?
Look at the physical and emotional toll on our health workers, who never go home on time, work on their feet all day, deal with violence and sadness, all within awful shift hours.
Then there’s our amazing emergency service people and what they deal with and the hours they work, often having no control from one day to the next over what they deal with or what time they get to knock off.
What about the hard slog of the overworked and underpaid welfare and community services sector, whose burnout rates have always been off the charts?
Anyone working in the corporate and legal worlds will just laugh at the idea of a 40 hour working week.
If teachers ever worked outside of the education system, they’d see they are not the only ones working too hard. What they will see is that they are the only ones who get nearly three months off with their families. It is just so disrespectful to the rest of us that rather than be grateful for that, they still complain. They should be careful what they wish for because their complaining could cause them to lose the support of the rest of us. Working parents struggle because the teacher’s union set up their conditions very well to suit them, often at our expense.
And they get alot of sympathy. Teachers cop constant crap from the community.
Another parent who expects teachers/schools to raise their child/ren while they work. How inconvenient to be a parent.
Teachers do not get 12 weeks holidays a year when you factor in the number of hours a week they work during term, the hours of prep/planning/marking during holidays.and public holidays. A good portion of that time would be considered time in lieu for all the overtime worked.
That’s because they whinge endlessly. Most workers just get on with it, all while seeing less of their families than teachers.
Says someone who has never had to use child care. Teachers should walk in the shoes of other working parents before they accuse them of just using them for babysitting. Teachers have never cared how their conditions affect everybody else. Which profession should give up their annual leave for curriculum days, for example?