A government report highlighted secondary school teachers regularly work more than 50 hours a week. We ask four science teachers whether that’s common for them
There’s no such thing as standard working hours for a teacher. While the perception is that teachers work short days and get long holidays, the reality is very different. Most teachers stay after school hours and work in their holidays to feel like they’re doing a good job.
In England and Wales, directed time (1265 hours) covers lessons, meetings, duties and planning, preparation and assessment (PPA). But it’s rarely enough for everything a teacher needs to do. Between 2022 and 2025, the average secondary teacher estimated they worked more than 50 hours per week, according to a recent Department for Education report.
While estimated hours have reduced very slightly in recent years – from 51.2 in 2022 to 49.3 in 2025 – only a quarter of teachers agree that their hours are acceptable, and nearly two thirds say their job doesn’t leave them enough time for their personal life.
Is the situation the same for science teachers? Education in Chemistry asked four secondary science teachers how their working hours align with these figures and whether they think they’re acceptable. Here’s what they said.
Oh, maybe this is what a normal job feels like!
Nathan teaches in Leeds and has been at the same school for 10 years, where he now works a two-week timetable, with one day off a fortnight (0.9 full-time equivalent). He teaches all years including A-level chemistry. Nathan works about 12 hours on top of directed hours of 32.5 – arriving an hour before lessons each day, running revision and science clubs after school, and during lunchtimes, volunteering at breakfast club and marking on Sundays. He spends his Christmas holidays marking year 11 mock exams and takes on extra, paid hours every Easter to run revision sessions. His department makes efforts to reduce marking workloads, for example, by switching to auto-marking for end-of-topic tests.
‘That extra day off a fortnight was important. I felt like I had to take it off because I don’t think I would have been able to sustain a teaching career if I’d been there full-time.
‘I do think my workload is too high, but comparatively, I think it’s alright, from what I hear about other schools. Our leadership team is fairly grounded – they do try to reduce the workload where possible.
‘It’s peaks and troughs. You’ve got the stress of exam classes, the marking and pressure that comes September through to the start of June. But I don’t mind because of the gain time. [When] year 11 go on study leave, at that point, marking doesn’t go home. There’ll be several weeks of the year where it’s like, ‘Oh, maybe this is what a normal job feels like!’
‘At our school, we’ve got masses of kids coming from a background where, if we don’t run clubs for them, they’re not going to anything outside of school. I volunteer at our breakfast club as well, because that’s the first thing those kids are going to eat most days.
‘I think we do have particular challenges in the sciences, certainly at key stage 3. Assessments roll around quite a lot and the marking load is relatively high, but compared to English assessments, I don’t think I’d ever grumble too much about what marking science tests looks like versus 30 year 11 essays.’
I’m really passionate about what I’m doing
Marta, who teaches in Bristol, has been teaching since 2022. She recently moved schools and now teaches combined sciences from year 7–11, specialising in biology. Her two-week timetable covers 20 or 24 hours directed time including breaktime duties twice a week, and two or five hours for PPA. Her schedule is so packed she can’t take toilet breaks, so avoids drinking during the school day. She stays till at least 5.30pm daily, including running a weekly rocket club, estimating her total hours at more than 50. Marta tries to restrict homeworking to two hours on Sundays and the last weekend of school holidays, to minimise impact on her own children.
‘I’m really passionate about what I’m doing, so I want it to be done well, and that is bringing that reward. But at the end of the day, it’s also a job – I need to do it because I want to take my children on holiday.
‘By 3.15pm, I’ve already given everything I had. But when all the kids are gone, school becomes this quiet place. Then I go and make myself a cup of tea, sit down, have some deep breaths and slowly start doing. It’s printing, marking, responding to emails, logging points or detentions onto the system, catching up with updating pupil passports, SEND situations. If I stay there, then I’m not going to take anything home with me. Otherwise, I would just go crazy.
‘We try to say something if we see someone staying too long or being in too early, too often. Just to avoid the burnout. But it’s hard. These next two weeks, for example, I know that my rocket club will go on even longer than 4.30pm because we have a competition.
‘With science, we have additional things in terms of planning the practicals. Also, we are having more students with SEND, who are not always safe in a science lab, and it’s really hard to create a safe environment.
‘I think the teaching world is not really catching up with how the rest of the world works. There’s so much flexibility in other workplaces now. So, for young people coming into teaching, it’s no longer attractive.’
It’s very unseen, the work that we do outside of those classroom hours
Emily, a science teacher in Carmarthenshire, has been working at a rural state secondary since 2022, having qualified prior to the Covid pandemic. She teaches year 10 and 11, plus A-level chemistry and medical science. Emily estimates working 47.75 hours weekly, excluding parents’ evenings, which often extend her one hour designated for meetings to three hours. She has five hours for planning over a two-week timetable – two hours fewer than previously, due to science interventions with individual students. She has call-backs (like detentions) during break times and doesn’t consistently take lunch breaks. She also runs after-school revision sessions for sixth formers and works at least four hours on weekends.
‘It’s very unseen, the work that we do outside of those classroom hours. I think if we ran a timesheet, there would be a very big shock about the number of hours we actually do. I don’t think it’s acceptable; I don’t see myself doing this forever.
‘I’m on-site from 8am-ish doing prep, and I’m generally off-site from 5.30pm, with the intention that I don’t take anything home – it’s really important for my children that I don’t. It doesn’t always happen, though, and I don’t do enough marking. So, I’m not really meeting what I should be doing, because I don’t have the time. I keep trying to think about how I can plan more efficiently and faster, and plan less. And I haven’t cracked that yet.
‘I think there is something different about science, because we have to produce a lab sheet every week. I can’t do that the night before, because my technician needs to know what I’m doing. For example, I’ve not done the thermite reaction in school because I’ve not had the time to work with my technician to get that happening. And if I want to do anything new that I’ve never done before, I need to practise it in my PPA time.
‘There’s a degree to which our working hours should be more because we do have more holiday, but we do work very intensively for particular periods of time. And sustaining that is really hard.’
Teaching is a worthwhile profession, and it does give you satisfaction
David, who works in Gwynedd, has been teaching since 2005 and at his current school since 2019. As a faculty head, he teaches years 9–13 for 18 periods a week, leaving seven for management time, but these are often taken up by dealing with behaviour. He works at school between 7am and 4.30pm, then at home for at least two more hours nightly and a further six on weekends, easily totalling 64 hours per week. David spends his Christmas holidays every year planning for year 11 practical exams – standard across Wales – and just took Easter off for the first time in 20 years.
‘Middle leadership is the worst place to be, because we get squashed from both sides. I feel a great sense of responsibility to the teachers in my team [and] then I’ve got senior leadership putting pressure on me to do more admin than I’ve ever had to do before.
‘Teaching and learning is my first priority. It doesn’t matter if everything else falls short – I make sure my lessons are good. But I do less lesson prep than I used to, because I’ve been in this school for six years. [Then] it’s mostly keeping up with the emails. If I don’t keep up with them each day, I’ll just drown.
‘Managing behaviour is a big part of it. Behaviour is getting worse and worse across the board, which makes the job harder. It’s been the same in all the schools I’ve worked at since 2015.
‘Because we run science practical examinations for year 11 in January, that’s a very stressful time of year for heads of science. That’s caused me to have time absent due to work-related stress.
‘It’s also very difficult to get reliable or qualified technicians. We’re chronically understaffed in the technical department, which adds stress for all of us as teachers, because we never know that we’re going to get what we asked for.
‘Teaching is a worthwhile profession, and it does give you satisfaction, but it can be a thankless job sometimes, and it certainly isn’t good if you want work-life balance.’
All images: © MirageC/Getty Images
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