Job and pay satisfaction among teachers and leaders has increased, but poor behaviour is making them want to quit the classroom.
A major government survey shows average working hours have dropped slightly after a rise last year, but leaders are still working 11 hour weeks and teachers are more stressed.
The latest wave of the national working lives of teachers and leaders survey shows an improving picture in some aspects of the job, but a worsening situation in others.
The survey of more than 10,000 teachers and leaders working in English state schools was conducted between January and March of this year
Here are six key findings…
1. More staff happy with pay, but most still aren’t
The proportion of teachers and leaders reporting they were satisfied with their salary jumped by 10 percentage points, from 20 per cent in 2023 to 30 per cent this year. The figure was 26 per cent in 2022.
However, 58 per cent remain dissatisfied with their salary.
A quarter were satisfied with overall national-level changes to teachers’ pay in the last year, up from 7 per cent in the previous survey.
The survey was conducted after teachers got a 6.5 per cent pay rise following the union dispute last year, but before this year’s 5.5 per cent pay rise was awarded.
2. Job satisfaction creeps back up…
Nearly half of respondents (49 per cent) said they were satisfied with their job all of most of the time, up from 46 per cent in 2023, but still lower than the 58 per cent seen in 2022.
And two thirds of teachers and leaders (66 per cent) said the felt valued by their school, up slightly from 65 per cent in the two previous polls.
3. …but fewer enjoy teaching, and stress is higher
But the proportion of school staff who said they enjoyed classroom teaching most or all of the time has continued to fall, from 84 per cent in 2022 and 79 per cent in 2023 to 78 per cent this year.
Some 89 per cent of leaders and teachers said they experienced stress at work, up a percentage point on 2023.
The average life satisfaction score for teachers and leaders has also risen since 2023, the survey found, while their happiness score also increased year-on-year.
But these wellbeing measures are still “lower for survey respondents than for the wider population in England”, the report notes.
4. Behaviour makes teachers want to quit
Some 60 per cent of classroom teachers and middle leaders said they spent too much time following up on behaviour incidents, up from 57 per cent last year and 50 per cent in 2022.
Fewer than half (45 per cent) of teachers said behaviour at their school was either good or very good, down from 49 per cent in 2023 and 58 per cent in 2022.
Leaders were more positive, with around three quarters saying behaviour was good or very good at their school. This was consistent with 2023 but down from 85 per cent in 2022.
Just 49 per cent of teachers reported feeling always or mostly supported in tackling disruptive behaviour, lower than the 52 per cent in 2023 and 58 per cent in 2022.
And more than half of teachers and leaders (52 per cent) cited pupil behaviour as a reason for considering leaving the state sector – up from 41 per cent in 2023.
5. Working hours fall, but remain very high
Full-time leaders’ average working week was 57.6 hours in 2024, down slightly from 58.2 in 2023. But this still works out as more than 11 hours per day.
Meanwhile, full-time teachers in primary and secondary schools worked 51.2 hours per week on average in 2024, down slightly from 52.4 in 2023 and 51.9 in 2022.
Just one in five (22 per cent) teachers and leaders agreed they had an acceptable workload in 2024 – but this is an increase from 17 per cent in both 2022 and 2023.
Full-time teachers spent an average of 23.3 hours teaching per working week in 2024, lower than the 24 hours in 2023 and 23.7 in 2022
The last government set a goal to cut five hours from the working week of school staff.
6. Third of teachers and leaders consider quitting
About a third (34 per cent) of teachers and leaders said they’re considering quitting the state school sector in the next year for reasons other than retirement.
But that’s down two percentage points since 2023.
Of those who reported in 2023 that they were considering leaving, 15 per cent did so by 2024. This is up from the 12 per cent of those who considered it in 2022 who had left by 2023.
Of those who did leave in 2024, 84 per cent cited high workload, up from 80 per cent.
Around one-in-six leavers (18 per cent) of leavers in 2024 said they were likely to return to teaching or leading in the English state school sector within the next five years.
But about seven-in-ten, 68 per cent, said they were unlikely to return
