For the sake of our children, it’s time the teachers’ unions woke up to reality

These extra hours were, of course, tiring for both pupils and teachers but they offered time to explore subjects more thoroughly. Crucially, they were also an excellent preparation for youngsters for the world of work.

That is why I find it so galling that a teachers’ union has said that teachers should spend no more than 20 hours a week taking classes.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) wants limits on working hours amid concerns that school staff are facing what it says are “totally unsustainable” workloads.

Yes, it’s that time of year again when teacher union conferences are held. Unfortunately, they have not always been the best advertisement for the profession.

These “joyous” events, which almost inevitably manage to reduce the standing and status of teachers, are etched on my memory.

I remember them without affection – having foolishly, I realise, in retrospect, attended and attempted to engage in a dialogue with the activists when I was Education Secretary in the Labour government.

More than once, I had to endure booing and jeering when I addressed delegates and spoke about the need to raise standards and the fact that we should expect more from the teaching profession.

At one NUT conference in Blackpool, almost 20 years ago, I found myself barricaded in a small room by an unrepresentative mob of NUT representatives baying for blood. My crime was to expect a dramatic improvement in standards of teaching and a return to the days when teachers saw the job as a calling rather than a nine-to-five, 35-hour-a-week occupation.

I read this week that one NUT member told his conference that teachers were “fed up” with arriving at school at quarter to eight in the morning, and with most staying until half past six in the evening.

He said: “During that time, there is no time to eat, there’s no time to talk, there’s no time to think, there’s no time to chat, there’s not even time to go to the toilet in many cases. And after a day’s work, what do you do when you get home? Do you relax? I am sure you all know, there’s another two, three, four hours’ work. The number of emails you get after midnight – people sending each other plans and data and targets and things like that – is incredible.”

Welcome to the real world, my friend!

My heart sank when I saw that such sentiment resulted in the passing of a resolution that called for a 35-hour week and a maximum 20-hour teaching week. Yes, you read that right! Just 20 hours of teaching in the classroom. At this point we need to bear in mind that there are 13 weeks every year when schools are closed, including six over the summer.

I ought to explain that I have a postgraduate teaching certificate and am fully aware of how much work goes into preparation and marking. I also know how much the best teachers give to individual pupils and how, over recent years, the quality of teaching and leadership have dramatically improved. These heartening factors underscore how important it is that the Government rejects such impossible union demands – particularly at a time when financial resources are under enormous pressure and the protection of the quality offered by our education system has to be the top priority. It’s not surprising that someone with my background – who had to study for O-levels and combine a job at the gas board and night school to qualify for university – should have strong views about the value of good teachers.

I firmly believe that, tragically, there is currently too little old-fashioned commitment from the teaching professions outside the classroom and at weekends.

In years gone by, these extra hours were not seen as a terrible imposition but as an essential part of the job in getting to know pupils and making the school an essential part of the local community.

These teachers organised sport and after-school clubs. Competition afforded by such activities was complemented by outward bound trips and experiences that were often not otherwise available to those children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

That is why I introduced the so-called Pupil Learning Credit (now turned by the coalition into the Pupil Premium) to help schools pay for extracurricular activities such as visits to museums and galleries for those children in receipt of free school meals and whose parents could not afford these out-of-school experiences.

Over the years, these same teaching unions who are now calling for a reduction in their workload (and remember that the minimum salary for a recently qualified teacher is £21,588) have opposed school inspections, called for the scrapping of homework and have fought against league tables which allowed parents to compare one school with another. With such pig-headedness, you get the picture of this annual showcase of the teaching profession.

Every time someone raises any important educational issue, such as protecting the values already in our schools system or – dare it be said – adding an important extra element, the cry goes up from the teachers’ union that their members are already overloaded and teachers can’t take any more.

By all means, teachers should debate the protection of terms and conditions of their employment, which is of course the job of a trade union. But they must put the pupils’ interests first.

Ironically, rather than needing shorter hours, their workload has been helped by technology. This has made teachers’ life very much easier than in my days of “talk and chalk” when the task was to bring alive subjects which were 
not easily flashed up on a white board or downloaded on to a computer.

Teaching should be a wonderful vocation – not a nine-to-five job. In any case, the rewards should not be solely monetary. The real rewards come from seeing a young person blossom, their talent flourish and their life-chances improve. That takes more than a 35-hour week with just 20 hours of teaching in the classroom.

Across the country, we witnessed a mass failure of a generation of youngsters. Things then improved. That is why standards in our education system must be protected.

The same problems, I’m afraid, are starting to apply with some university teaching. The number of hours of tutoring and holding seminars has gradually reduced over the last 40 years to a point where teaching is almost a novelty for some who prefer to pursue their private research and who give the impression that devoting time to their students is an irritating inconvenience.

For the sake of everyone in this country, it’s time for the teaching unions to stop their ridiculous demands, look around at what is happening in the rest of the world and wake up to reality. Otherwise they risk losing, forever, the respect of pupils and parents alike.