Author: Naimish Gohil
Posted: 28 Feb 2019
Estimated time to read: 2 mins
It’s long been known that teachers are overworked and the burden of admin and excessive workload is impactful to their lives, both mentally and physically. Today’s Metro headline ‘Teachers lose a day’s pay to do homework’ has once again, brought the severity of the teaching crisis to our attention.
With teachers working on average 54.4 hours a week, they don’t have the time to do everything that is required of them and work to the best of their ability. As there have been no immediate actions taken to address the stress, workload and recruitment crisis that our teachers face, many have resorted to working part-time, only working 4 out of 5 days a week, using the 5th day to catch up on lesson planning and marking, in turn docking their pay by thousands in the name of providing high quality teaching so their students won’t suffer.
What does it say about this profession that educators would rather slash their pay by thousands in order to be able to physically do their job well?
First off, we are lucky to have these sorts of teachers working in our schools - those who are so dedicated to providing the best possible education to our students that they are willing to sacrifice their livelihood in order to to ensure they are doing right by their pupils.
Secondly, it says that there is a very serious issue at hand here, one that can no longer be overlooked. Teachers are the people that are educating our children and our future - if we want the best for today’s young people who will shape the future, we need to be looking after the people who are helping to secure that.
It’s for these two reasons I gave up teaching to pursue the creation of Show My Homework which I knew could impact more students than I was ever able to as a stretched Assistant Head. With all that has been going on recently we need to take a step back, and look at what’s important. If we want a successful post-Brexit Britain, we need well-educated and resourceful students who are aware of the world we’re living in to help us thrive.
Our teachers are the ones who can help us achieve this, but in order for that to happen we need to address the shortfall in access to technologies that are designed solely to reduce the burden of workloads for our teachers. I believe this is the single biggest impact we can have within the education system today to prevent teachers from having to make such sacrifices as described in the headline today.
