"Paul Terry" wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:



Quite frankly working those sorts of hours is either grossly inefficient

I suggest you tell that to my former teaching colleagues who, having spent
7 hours at school with no breaks, come home to 4 hours of marking,
preparation and form-filling-in (unless there are parents' evenings, drama
nights, concerts, and the like, when it means working weekends as well).
And holidays? That's when you are expected to do training.

That is what teachers would have you believe. No doubt some put in those
hours, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Teachers now have protected 'non-contact' time for training. Many admin
tasks have been taken on by school office staff, eg photocopying. The
salaries have also increased substantially since 1997.

The real problem area now, in terms of workload and stress, is for Heads.
This has manifested itself in a large number of unfilled vacancies.

In the area in which I now work (publishing), real competition forces down
income to the extent that working long hours are the only way to survive.

Don't understand that. If there's not enough work to go around due to
competition, why are you working longer hours?

Conversely, if you have so many jobs that you *need* to work long hours, why
not increase your pricing to 'lose' some marginal clients?

Chris