Schools in the UK and United States are required to be open to students for a certain amount of days each academic year. Teachers are always at school when pupils are in attendance, as well as office staff and teacher assistants.
Modern times people are not just working 39 or 40 hours a week, as occupations and shift patterns also involve 10-12 hours a day at work, thus there’s not definitive amount of hours of work each year.
Council funded England secondary school teacher works 08.00-15.30 (Times vary slightly) for 195 days total each year. 7 ½ hours a day in school for lessons, tutor group, duties and assembly. Occasionally after school meetings/training takes place, although this is accounted for in inset training time of 5 days when pupils are not at school.
School teacher: How many work hours a year formula: Multiply number work hours a day x number of work days a year.
Hours worked day 7.5 x 195 days = 1,462.5 England & Wales full time teacher working hours in a year at school Monday to Friday.
Northern Ireland school year 200 school days a year for full time teachers, including inset training. Hours worked 7.5 day x 200 days = 1500 hours in a year of work for a teacher in N Ireland school.
Teacher wellbeing
Good work and personal life balance as a school teacher is debatable; especially in you’re first 3 years out of training or in a leadership or head of department position. Mentally and physically teachers require looking after themselves by eating correctly & getting a good night sleep.
As UK primary or secondary teachers you take work home with you from marking, lesson planning, school wide duties and keeping up with the subject & educational issues. Yes, you get about 13 weeks off school, although you work during the school term on the ever changing school education teaching & learning requirements.
Knowing the number of days you require to work and hours per day at school helps with lesson planning/preparation and estimating the amount of time at home to complete school work. Many teachers get marking and lesson prep completed at school, although I always required taking students exercise books home or continued lesson plans in the evenings.
Teachers can organise they’re life in advance knowing how many hours of work they are required at school coupled with an estimate of time required for lesson prep, marking and other teacher tasks to balance work & home life.
Know how many hours in a year of work benefits
Developing a scheme of work: Knowing you have a certain amount of days each academic year you can plan the subject topics & time allocated for teaching & assessment split into individual blocks of lessons.
Teaching days & hours each week: You know in advance the total amount of days you can teach all subject topics to each year group. Single & double lessons are allocated in each department and you can allocate a certain amount of hours teaching per topic.
Examination revision: When all topic lessons have be taught to students teachers allocate days in December, April & May for exam revision split into hours going over more difficult topics with pupils.
Head of year assembly: Each school head of year group is given a certain number of days in the school year to deliver an assembly to all students in that year age group. The head of year plans to use the limited time, and must use the hours each year to announce important school information and guidance.
Salary for hours worked a year calculation
Full time permanently employed teacher in Wales, Scotland & England council maintained primary & secondary schools are on a fixed basic teacher salary according to the pay scale they’re on. The result is teachers get the same basic pay each year regardless the amount of hours worked.
A teacher can calculate they’re working hourly & daily rate of pay for the salary they receive each year.
Daily teacher salary pay rate: Divide salary per year by number of days work each year.
Salary £36,543 / 195 days = £187.40 per working school day.
Hourly teacher pay rate: Divide yearly teacher salary by total amount of school work hours a year
Days 195 x 7.5 hours a day worked = 1462.5 hours worked each year
Salary £36,543 / 1462.5 hours = £24.99 pay per hour teacher at school.
Calculating working hours in a year and seeing what daily or hourly rate of teacher pay you’re on as a qualified primary or secondary school teacher could be of benefit.
You may like teaching or you could be asking yourself could I be paid a better salary for fewer or similar hours of work in another occupation.