Teachers in private schools are working longer hours this year for little extra pay, according to a recent survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).
The research also finds that the number of students attending private schools has risen at its fastest rate since the financial crash in 2008.
The union asked more than 1,000 teachers in independent schools about their working hours; 67% said they work more than 48 hours a week during term time – up 1.3% from last year. Nearly half (44%) said they worked between 49 to 60 hours a week and a quarter work more than 60 hours a week.
When asked about pay, 81% say they are due to receive a below-inflation pay rise this year.
So, what data is available to compare working hours and pay across the state and private sector? We’ve done some digging to explore how the sectors shape up:
Teacher working hours: private v state
Teachers across the education landscape work around 50 hours a week.
There is no research directly comparing working hours in the state and private sector, however. The ATL conducts a self-selecting annual survey, which doesn’t record information about the spread of respondents across the UK. The Department for Education (DfE) does a weighted survey annually of maintained primary, secondary, special and academy schools in England. The sample sizes for both pieces of research are fairly robust, though, at around 1,000 respondents each.
The annual ATL research suggests that working hours in independent sector have stayed at a relatively steady rate since 2004, at more than 48 hours for most teachers. In the 2006 survey, 60% of 300 independent school teachers said they worked more than 50 hours a week and in 2008 67% said that they worked 48 hours plus.
The average hours worked in the state sector are similar. In the government’s 2013 workload survey, the average school teacher reported working more than 50 hours a week. A breakdown reveals how this changes according to schools; secondary school headteachers clocked up more than 60 hours, for example.
The difference seems to be that state school hours are increasing quickly in certain areas. The hours worked in state primary schools has gone up significantly since 2010 from 51 hours to nearly 60 in 2013. For secondary school teachers it has gone up from 50 working hours in 2010 to 56 in 2013.
Lunch breaks: state v private
On average, 36% of independent school teachers said that they don’t get an uninterrupted lunch break of 20 minutes a day, according to the ATL survey. A fifth (19.5%) said they never receive an uninterrupted lunch break of 40 minutes each day, and a further fifth (21%) said they only rarely get a break of 40 minutes.
No research has been done specifically into state school teacher breaks, but the ATL did some research in 2012. They found that 33% said they have a lunch break in school of 60 minutes, while 25% said it was 45 to 60 minutes and 26% recorded getting 30 to 45 minutes. Only 1.2% said there was just 20 minutes for lunch.
Although this isn’t a direct comparison, it does suggest state school teachers are more inclined to break for lunch.
Interestingly, 25% of respondents said that they eat at their desk everyday, while 4% went to the canteen and 15% to the staffroom.
Pay – how does it compare?
It’s difficult to compare pay across the two sectors because salaries in private education are at the discretion of the school and the only public research into this has been conducted by the ATL.
The 2014 ATL pay survey found that 2% of respondents in independent schools were paid less than £20,000, while the majority (39%) were paid £30,000-39,000. A further 33% of respondents said that they earned between £40,000 and £49,999. Only 1% reported to earn more than £70,000 a year.
More than a fifth of independent staff said that they will get a smaller pay rise than counterparts in state schools this year. Almost 60% report an increase between 1% and 2% and 17% will receive no increase at all. Teachers in maintained schools were were given a minimum of 1% below-inflation pay rise for 2014-15.
This comes as fees to independent schools have gone up, with more than 20% of ATL respondents saying that fees have gone up by between 2% and 4% in the last academic year.
According to the government’s teachers pay and conditions report 2014, a teacher should get between £22,023 and £32,187 in England and Wales (excluding London). The average salary for a full-time qualified teacher according to government data is £38,100 – a £500 rise on the previous year.
Conclusions
Salaries seem slightly healthier in the private sector, but not significantly so and that may slow as independent school teachers miss out on rises. What’s more, working hours across the two sectors seems to be equally heavy with, but with a more noticeable change in the last 10 years for state school teachers.
When it comes to lunch breaks data shows you are more likely to take a full hour if you’re working in a state school – although it was hard to make comparisons here given no data of direct comparison could be used.
These figures are only a starter for comparing workloads and pay across the two sectors. Have you noticed a significant increase in time spent in school over the last five years? Do you spend more time teaching and less time marking? To be involved in this debate tweet us via @GuardianTeach using the hashtag #teacherwellbeing2014.
