‘We need a total culture change’: the UK teacher told to work 60-hour week or leave after having baby

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/dec/21/we-need-a-total-culture-change-the-uk-teacher-told-to-work-60-hour-week-or-leave-after-having-baby

by rejs7

20 comments

  2. Bloody hell, 80 hours a week? Is that even enough free time to have a cup of tea?

  3. It’s like victorian times she would need a high earner partner. Marrying for security

  4. This does not reflect well on the headteacher at her school.

  5. Two big problems with work flexibility, for teachers:

    1) Schools are quite good at supporting/allowing teachers to work part time, but only if they are not in management. As soon as you’re a head of department, head of year or in senior leadership, they will probably refuse any requests to work part-time. This leads to people like this teacher quitting completely and is a serious obstacle to career progression for many.

    2) Lots of school management is quite poor quality. Hiring good managers is very difficult and schools often can’t find many willing to do it, so schools end up hiring bad ones just to fill the positions.

  6. Let me guess, only female teachers are going to be asked to do this by a white, male headteacher

  7. Primary is hell. A teacher may well only have 30 to 35 kids to teach but the hours they work and the extra curricular activities they do are ridiculous.
    I worked secondary for 15 years and I would honestly prefer the several hundred students whose names I don’t know, the verbal abuse and physical threats over primary. At least you get to stop a 5pm in secondary…if you’re tough enough to resist the management.

  8. This is a huge problem but you cannot be on the SLT and only do 2.5 days a week. You cannot be a key leader of the school and not be in contact half the time. Other roles such as classroom teachers have more flexibility and more can be done to help but leaders role have a huge impact of staff and students.

  9. I don’t think we need a culture change because I believe this sort of request is already illegal under existing legislation.

    I understand needing to take a different role due to parenting commitments but I don’t think they needed her to leave entirely, seems a bit much and way to open to liability.

  10. There are two problems here. 1) teachers spending 99.1% of their time doing anything but actually teaching because of scope creep in their jobs, and 2) the actual existence of maternity pay where it’s just assumed that the general public should subsidise other people having babies. 

  11. I love empty ultimatums like that……guaranteed I will call your bluff every time……seee ya

  13. As per usual, non-teachers are desperate to say that teaching is easy and that you have all the weekends and holidays to relax. This is despite the fact that excessive workload is one of the top reasons teachers are leaving the profession (with many NQTs lasting less than three years) and constant first-person anecdotes outlining how much extra work goes into teaching.

    Those same critics never step into the classroom to show how it is done though. For such an allegedly easy job, such critics are always reluctant to prove their point.

  14. Having a baby was a choice on her part. If that makes you tired etc then that’s on her..

  15. My wife was refused a flexible working request at a school because “No-one who’s any good wants to work part-time…” They’re terrible.

  16. Having it a baby has nothing to do with it, why should any teacher be working 60 hours?

  17. What about all the school holidays you have. Average it out and your better off

  18. > Vickie Johnson was a deputy headteacher at a small primary school in Greater Manchester working exhausting 60-hour weeks when she became pregnant with her son. “I had been leaving the house so early and getting back late, as well as working weekends and evenings at home,” she says. “I realised I wouldn’t ever see my baby and that wasn’t OK.”

    Is there a typo here? Did the news state she’s a teacher, not a banker? 60 hours for a teacher, is that correct?

  19. Teaching is well paid. Especially when you factor in the holidays (yes. I know they work some, they should) and in comparison to other public sector roles

    Teachers appear to be their own worst enemies at times too.

    There definitely needs to be a culture change around accepted workload and management of kids behaviour and parents expectations.

  20. Don’t you know Kemi Badenoch was doing meetings while she was literally giving birth? Along with eating her steak and chips while the baby was being exited from that cavern of doom.

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