Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union, said: “Year after year teachers top the TUC’s overtime league table. Even worse, teachers say many of the hours they are being expected to do aren’t even helpful to the children they teach. Instead it is time spent evidencing the work they are doing. With workload going up and real terms pay going down it is no surprise that we are facing such problems with recruiting new teachers and keeping the ones we’ve got.”
Editor’s note
Today is the TUC’s 15th annual Work Your Proper Hours Day, marking the fact that the average worker doing unpaid overtime has effectively worked the year so far for free.
The following tables derive from the TUC’s own press release:
Table 1 – teachers and education professionals - unpaid overtime by education sector
Pre-school |
Primary |
Secondary |
Higher education |
Other education |
|
Number working unpaid overtime |
17,152 |
272,134 |
300,072 |
88,033 |
33,171 |
Total employees |
35,199 |
479,687 |
489,078 |
227,790 |
81,187 |
% working unpaid overtime |
48.7 |
56.7 |
61.4 |
38.2 |
40.9 |
Total weekly hours unpaid overtime |
109,152 |
3,540,134 |
3,826,989 |
849,461 |
346,135 |
Total annual hours unpaid overtime |
5,676,000 |
184,087,000 |
199,003,000 |
44,172,000 |
17,999,000 |
Average weekly hours unpaid overtime |
6.4 |
13.0 |
12.8 |
9.8 |
10.4 |
Source: LFS 2018 Q3.
Table 2 – unpaid overtime for occupations with longest average unpaid hours
Occupation |
Number employees working unpaid overtime |
Per cent working unpaid overtime |
Average unpaid hours |
Teaching and educational professionals |
735,000 |
52.5% |
12.1 |
Chief Executive |
41,000 |
39.5% |
11.4% |
Legal professionals |
69,000 |
42.5% |
10.2 |
Hospitality and catering managers |
40,000 |
17.6% |
9.7 |
Functional managers* |
374,000 |
40.4% |
9.2 |
Production managers |
133,000 |
32.1% |
8.9 |
88,000 |
32.7% |
8.9 |
|
Finance institution managers |
35,000 |
42.3% |
8.9 |
Senior officers in the protective services |
15,000 |
28.4% |
8.7 |
Welfare professionals |
50,000 |
31.3% |
8.5 |
Source: the TUC’s analysis used unpublished ONS data from the Labour Force Survey (July-September 2018) and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (2018)
*Functional managers: financial managers, marketing and sales directors, purchasing managers, advertising and public relations directors, human resource managers, IT managers.