Teachers and school leaders workload continues to rise

School leaders and teachers now work even more hours compared to last year, a government survey has found. 

The latest wave of the working lives of teachers and leaders survey shows full-time leaders’ average working week in 2023 was 58.2 hours up from 57.5 in 2022.

That equates to more than 11 hours a day. 

The annual survey from the Department for Education (DfE) explores the working lives of teachers and leaders, from workload to attitudes to pay. 

It comes after the DfE assembled a workload reduction taskforce with the aim of reducing the average working week by five hours.

Aside from an overload of work hours, the survey also found that job satisfaction has fallen. Only 46 per cent were satisfied “most of the time”, compared to 58 per cent last year. Nineteen percent rarely had satisfaction. 

Nine in 10 teachers and leaders did not feel valued by policymakers, with 71 per cent disagreeing that the school inspection regime provided a “fair assessment” of school performance. 

But 65 per cent did feel valued by their school.

The rest of the survey will be published in Spring, and will include a detailed reporting of all survey questions and additional analysis by school and teacher characteristics.