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In Switzerland primary teachers spend what, on the face of it, seems like a reasonably palatable 788 hours in front of classes per year, with the figure falling to an arguably even more acceptable 638 hours in upper secondary.

To put these stats into context, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) averages for class-contact time across the sectors are 773 hours and 679 hours, respectively.

The hours are well below those that UK teachers can expect to spend teaching - 900 hours per year in England (according to published in September) and 855 in Scotland, based on Scottish teachers’ terms and conditions as recorded by the OECD.

However, Switzerland is one of 21 countries and economies where teachers work during the school holidays, for up to eight weeks, according to the that compares education systems around the world.

So, while teachers in Swiss schools might spend less time delivering lessons than their counterparts in the UK, the country has one of the highest levels of total teacher working time; for example, 1,810 hours per year for upper-secondary staff. The OECD average for upper secondary is 1,577 hours.

Teacher workload around the world

This is why OECD education analyst Éric Charbonnier warns against looking at class-contact time in isolation and emphasises the importance of seeing “the whole picture”.

Any country where teachers spend more than half of their time on tasks other than teaching should set alarm bells ringing, he says.

In Switzerland teachers in upper secondary spend 35 per cent of their time in class, a figure on a par with Germany. Charbonnier lives in France, where the high wages of German teachers - twice those of French staff - are often looked upon with envy.

Yet, despite the better wages, there are “big problems” with the attractiveness of the profession in Germany.

“The perception is that every year German teachers have more administrative tasks to do,” he says. “That makes the profession less interesting, because most people want to become teachers so they can teach and be in front of classes.”

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However, while Germany and Switzerland might be extreme examples, most countries fail to hit Charbonnier’s target that teachers should spend at least half their time teaching.

The OECD’s report finds that “even though teaching is a core activity for teachers, they spend most of their working time on activities other than teaching in many countries”.

It should be emphasised that the OECD figures are based on statutory hours for both overall teaching work and teaching hours specifically (England does not stipulate an amount for the latter, so is absent from the graphs in this article). The OECD acknowledges that “teaching time may differ from the regulations, for example because of overtime”; however, it says that the figures, while perhaps not capturing the full picture, still “offer valuable insights into the demands placed on teachers in different countries”.

On average, the OECD finds that 43 per cent of teachers’ working time is spent on teaching, ranging from less than 32 per cent in Japan, Norway and Turkey, to 61 per cent or more in Luxembourg, Peru and Scotland.

However, the OECD report also recognises that too much time in front of classes can mean less time to devote to tasks such as assessing students and preparing lessons, with the upshot that teachers may have to do these in their own time.

There is, therefore, a balance to be struck between time in class and the time needed for preparation, planning and CPD. Charbonnier, however, declines to be more specific than his recommendation of at least a 50:50 split between teaching and other tasks.

Ultimately, Charbonnier finds, teachers’ time in front of classes is something that governments tend not to tinker with, because it is a “sensitive” issue: try to increase class-contact time and face the wrath of trade unions; try to decrease it, and face big cost implications.

“You have plenty of policies to increase teacher salaries or to decrease class sizes, but, in general, if you look over time, teaching time is not changing a lot in a country,” he says.

There are, of course, some notable exceptions.

Hungary, for example, passed a controversial bill in July 2023, dubbed the “vengeance bill” by teachers who see it as a response to strike action. It stipulates that maximum working hours will be increased from 32 to 48 hours per week, and that daily working hours will increase from eight to 12.

The law came into force in January 2024, amid warnings that it would exacerbate teacher shortages.

Reluctance to change class-contact time

In Scotland, meanwhile, the government has pledged to reduce class-contact time by 90 minutes a week. However, amid the tough financial climate and teacher shortages, there have been accusations of “glacial” progress on this from the country’s teaching unions.

The pledge was made in 2021 and, to date, there has been no change to class-contact time, although the Scottish government continues to insist it plans to deliver and make “meaningful progress” before the end of the current parliamentary term in 2026.

There is much debate in Scotland about how this extra time out of class should be spent - should it go to teachers for lesson preparation and planning, or should headteachers at least have some say in how it is used, perhaps with staff CPD in mind?

Countries that perform well in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), which tests 15-year-olds in maths, science and reading, invest in “teacher quality and good quality professional development” that is “targeted on the needs of the teacher”, says Charbonnier.

In some countries, for example, the response to pupils’ poor performance in maths has been to increase the number of hours of maths instruction, but that is misguided, he says - the focus should be on lesson quality, not lesson quantity.

Crucial to address teachers’ CPD

“We need to think about teacher professional development. For me, it is not something that is sufficiently debated,” Charbonnier says.

In Singapore - which topped the Pisa 2022 rankings in maths, reading and science - every teacher has an “action plan” that includes 80 hours of professional development targeted to their needs.

Estonia, another Pisa success story, is also strong in this regard: its longstanding focus on technology - the 1990s �վ�����������ü��� (Tiger Leap) built up schools’ technology infrastructure, including internet access for all schools - stood it in good stead when Covid-19 hit in 2020 and schools around the world were forced to revert to remote learning, says Charbonnier.

He also talks about teachers in Japan undergoing professional development that they are then obliged to quickly put into practice - with the impact on their students fed back and shared with colleagues.

“Sometimes the teacher will draft a report and assess their students to see if the changes they made led to an improvement in performance,” he says.

Happiness with working conditions

However, while Japan also performs well when it comes to Pisa, teachers there are far from happy with their working conditions.

Class-contact time in Japan is recorded by the OECD as 745 hours for primary teachers and 507 hours for upper secondary staff, which is among the lowest. But total working time, again, is among the highest - at 1,728 hours.

According to a survey conducted by the Japan Teachers’ Union (JTU) in 2023, teachers in public schools put in an average of 96 hours of overtime a month. The union says lower secondary school teachers work an average of 11 hours daily.

This puts them “at real risk of , or “death from overwork”, says the JTU. Japan regards over 80 hours of overtime as being in the karoshi danger zone.

According to the union, there are a number of drivers for unsustainable teacher workload in Japan, including: teacher shortages, large class sizes of up to 40 pupils and after-school clubs and activities that teachers are required to attend as coaches and organisers.

It says that, on average, junior-high teachers spend more than two hours per day at school at weekends, with much of that time devoted to club activities.

The OECD report reflects this: Japan is one of 10 countries where engaging in extracurricular activities is mandatory for teachers in some sectors. Lower-secondary teachers in the country spend 13 per cent of their working time on extracurricular responsibilities.

Getting it right on teachers’ terms and conditions

Arguably, now more than ever, the pressure is on to get teachers’ terms and conditions right around the globe.

���Ա������’s , published in February 2024, projected a deficit of 44 million primary and secondary teachers by 2030.

Teacher shortages were “a global issue, prevalent not only in developing nations but also in high-income regions like Europe and North America”, where difficulties in recruiting teachers were “posing significant challenges to educational quality and equity”.

The report said that addressing shortages required “a holistic approach”, with “training”, “working conditions” and “equitable access to professional development” all highlighted as important.

Research into also identifies that such factors are crucial if schools want to hold on to teachers.

A 2024 report from ISC Research states: “High teacher retention rates tend to be observed in countries that have favourable living conditions, good legal protections and competitive salary and benefits packages.”

It adds: “Supportive work environments and investment in CPD are also a common theme among countries with good retention rates.”

Improving workload

In England the government has been clear that improving working conditions is key to improving teacher retention, given that workload is “consistently cited as an important factor for teachers and leaders leaving the profession”.

On the back of initial recommendations from a task force, the UK government highlighted 23 administrative tasks that teachers should not do in the document.

These, according to the government task force, include photocopying, “producing and collating analyses of attendance figures” and “investigating a pupil’s absence”.

So, with his international perspective, is Charbonnier optimistic that, despite all the problems with teacher shortages, terms and conditions could improve, including access to tailored professional development, which he sees as key to improved student outcomes?

Making teaching more appealing

The growing problem of teacher recruitment is “forcing governments to rethink how to make the profession more attractive”, he says, adding: “This could, indeed, draw long-overdue attention to key issues such as high-quality professional development.”

But he also says that “in many countries tight public finances remain a serious obstacle to change, as such measures come at a cost”.

However, there will likely be a cost for countries such as Hungary that try to solve shortages by heaping more pressure on to existing staff, many of whom are expected to vote with their feet and quit the profession.

Pisa 2022 found that school leaders were more concerned than in 2018 about education staff shortages, and more likely to report “that instruction was hindered, to some extent or a lot, by inadequate or poorly qualified teaching staff”.

Education leaders, therefore, have a choice: make the profession more appealing or watch the quality of education suffer. The time teachers spend in front of classes will be an important factor in improving the pull of teaching as a profession - but, of course, it is just one part of the picture.

Emma Seith is a senior reporter at Tes

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