“How would I find a job that finishes at 1pm? It’s £8 for an afternoon session and I’ve got three kids. “It’s hard enough to find a job that finishes within normal school hours,” Emma Lennox said. Parents arriving at the school – which is part of a shopping precinct bolted on to a 1990s housing estate where there are no street corners, only gentle curves and cul-de-sacs – were unimpressed. Many teachers, despite their love of frontline teaching, cannot manage this workload and maintain a healthy work/life balance, and subsequently resign.” The huge workload ensures teachers work an average of 60 hours a week during term time and through their holidays to keep up.
The problem, the headteacher said in a letter to parents, was recruitment, retention and workload, which had a “direct, major impact on, not only our children’s education, but on their well-being and confidence. In Daventry, Northamptonshire, Ashby Fields primary floated the idea of closing early on Fridays, sending children home at 1.15pm, with the possibility of an after-school club for children of working parents. Some schools have tried radical solutions to this crisis of being unable to find or keep staff. If you live with that sword of Damocles over your head, it’s difficult not to cascade that fear to the rest of your school.” You can have one year of pupils which is very different from previous years, which they have no control over. “In no other profession would you have that. “One bad year can be career-ending,” said Valentine Mulholland, head of policy at the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT). And that can be catastrophic for teachers. With less teaching time, students make less progress. The number of women leaving secondary schools increased by more than a quarter in just four yearsĪ lack of teachers means classes are getting bigger. And not enough of them are being replaced – there is now a shortfall of 30,000 classroom teachers, particularly at secondary level, where 20% of teacher training vacancies are unfilled. Just under 40,000 teachers quit the profession in 2016 – the latest figures available – representing about 9% of the workforce, according to government figures. Every teacher knows someone who has left the profession, retired early, had a breakdown, or been signed off work with stress. And then you’ve got marking and other things on top.” If you have 25 hours of lessons a week, that’s already 50 hours. “You’re meant to spend no more than an hour preparing for each lesson, but if you’re going to do a half-decent job, you need two hours. Lintell was overwhelmed by two things: pouring his soul into “choreographing the classroom” five times a day and seeing any hope of recovery disappear under a mountain of preparation for the next day’s performances.
I was doing my job, coming home, having dinner, then starting work at 8.30pm and working through until 1am, every night.”
“The irony is that I barely got to see my family. “The idea was to spend time with my daughter, who was turning four,” he said.