03/10/2026
Pssst... It's okay to find out how your employment rights work.
It is crazy how frightened many teachers are that they'll be labelled a troublemaker just because they want to know what their rights are about attending a wedding*, or being told to organise a ski trip**, or whether their contract *really* says they have to mark their coursework over the weekend***.
Other professionals understand their terms and conditions of employment intimately, so it's high time teachers did too.
Three things are driving our current workload crisis:
One, it's driven by teachers consistently "going the extra mile", either out of goodwill born of the erroneous expectation that it's "just the job", or because they reckon that will get them The Big Promotion quicker.
The former is simply unprofessional, running a 21st century education system on voluntary labour, and the second should leave a sickly feeling in your throat.
So you win promotion by showing how willing you are to put your rights, your health, and your life outside of work on the pyre, just to catch the eye of some SLT interviewer who is wilfully ignoring their *legal* obligation under Health and Safety Law to stop you from engaging in such unhealthy working patterns?
Yuck.
Two, there's a culture of fear in many schools, sometimes real, sometimes imagined, whereby teachers are frightened to be seen to be "the awkward squad" by querying issues about their contractual rights or workload.
A system which holds together only while the workers within it have no idea what their employment rights are is by definition exploitative. It smacks of those horror stories you read about indentured labourers, working constantly to achieve some goal which continually moves just that little bit further out of reach.
Our employment contract places boundaries around our working time, and puts limits on what we can be expected to do in those working hours. If you don't understand and implement these rights then teaching will infect every other aspect of your life to the point where it makes you ill.
It's that simple.
Finally, many managers either don't understand or don't apply the rules in their schools, often because the demands they face far outstrip the workload capacity of their staff. Rather than say "no" to the scary employers, Department and arms-length bodies, some managers simply try and squeeze as much productivity out of their staff as is humanly possible, even if it breaches their teachers' working rights.
Until there's a robust mechanism to both limit the unsustainable demands being placed on school leaders, while holding poor managers accountable when they breach teachers rights, this will continue to be a problem.
But key to all of this is knowing those rights in the first place, while being secure and content enough to talk about and stand up for them in your school.
So don't be afraid of educating yourself about these matters, kidz.
In the meantime it's Saturday... so stop thinking about work. I will try and do the same as I'm about a foot away from finishing knitting my latest scarf... just in time for the frosts.
Have a great one, think1265-ers. Don't sweat the small stuff.
B out.
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* "1 day’s leave with pay if the bride or groom is a near relative or other relative or if the teacher is a bridesmaid or best man, but, where extensive travel is involved, up to 2 days may be granted." TNC 2014/18
** "Principals cannot direct Teachers to take pupils on educational visits involving overnight stays. Where this takes place on a voluntary basis it is a matter of negotiation between the Teacher and the Principal as to the amount of directed time which will be allocated to this activity out of the annual time budget. This should include an appropriate allocation of time for the organisation of such visits." TNC 2024/2 section 5.3
*** "A Teacher cannot be directed to undertake duties beyond 1,265 hours on 195 days." TNC 2024/2 section 5.3
"Regarding the current arrangements for controlled assessment, it is clear that certification is essentially dependent on the goodwill of teaching staff to mark internal assessments without, in all instances, adequate time being provided in DTBs or through informal TOIL arrangements. The Panel recommends that teachers either be afforded the time for marking or be paid for marking directly by the Awarding Body for the marking duties carried out on its behalf." Recommendation 18, Independent Review of Workload, 2025.
