Teachers work more unpaid overtime than any other occupation, research shows

More than 729,000 teachers and education professionals have been regularly working for free, new research shows.

According to data of government statistics by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), teachers are working an average of 12.1 hours in unpaid overtime each week.

The results show that teachers work more unpaid overtime than any other occupation, which is believed to be as a result of workload pressures.

The statistics also revealed that 52.8 per cent of the teaching profession are working excessive hours for free.

In 2015, there were 723,000 teaching professionals working an average of 11.9 hours unpaid, showing an increase in the number of people working for free to keep up with work demands.

Kevin Courtney, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), commented: “Once again, the TUC has found that teachers and the education sector as a whole are subject to enormous levels of unpaid overtime.

“This situation is untenable. Long and unmanageable working hours are the biggest single reason cited by teachers for leaving the profession.

“It is the Government's obsession with continual change alongside punitive accountability and assessment measures which has created this problem.”

Courtney added: “These measures are all about providing data for bureaucrats and not preparing exciting lessons for children and young people. It is high time the Government addressed it seriously, starting by publishing the results of the working time survey it carried out in March 2016 and has sat on ever since.”