Pay Teachers Overtime!

Teacher hours are a hotly debated topic. Some claim to do over 70 hours a week, while others seem to cruise through by arriving just before the students do, then leaving not long after the students leave. Yet, the salary is the same! Why is it that some teachers workload is enormous compared to other teachers? Why is it that the salary is the same, regardless of the disparity? Is it possible to match salaries to workloads? I believe the answer is simple: pay teachers overtime!

Every classroom within a school is different, just as every school is different. Teacher roles also vary, from classroom teacher to specialist subject. From the perspective of a primary teacher, they need to manage large numbers of children, each with different needs, while trying to educate them in many different subject areas. A junior primary teacher will admit to teaching fewer children; however, the young minds they teach are still quite raw, and they often define their classrooms as zoos. A specialist teacher will admit to only needing to teach one main subject area; however, they will argue that their work is school-wide. Whichever position you claim, there are challenges. I am adamant that a form of overtime pay will help improve the fairness of the teacher-work-to-teacher-pay ratio.

What to avoid

I would first like to abolish any thoughts about teachers inputting after-school hours work for overtime pay. Otherwise, a 10-minute task might turn into an hour-long task. I have also been there, listening to a teacher cry to their principal about being at school and working until 7 p.m. I was also there when that same teacher was having a chat with another colleague between 3 and 5 p.m., then decided to start doing their school administration work. Logic would suggest that if the 2 hours of chat occurred after the administration work, then that teacher could have left at 5 p.m.

The disparity and common misconceptions

Our system ranks schools by category. Your highest rank, category 7, is your leafy green school, which generally involves professional or high-income-earning families. Where the lowest, category 1, is your low socio-economic area schools and disadvantages children where English is seen as an additional language. You then progress from categories 2–6, the better the socio-economic area is.

Our system’s common misconceptions include:
“Higher category schools have a higher number of students within the classrooms and more parental involvement, meaning a larger administration load, but also have less behaviour and social-emotional issues.”

“Lower category schools have fewer students within the classrooms and less parental involvement, meaning a lighter administration load but also an increase in difficult behaviours and social-emotional issues.”

I have taught in schools from category 1 up to category 7, and I can tell you, those misconceptions are a load of crap! I have been teaching in a category 2 school for a number of years, so let’s do some comparisons of workloads:

I have ranged between 28 and 30 students in my classroom, similar to a high-category school that has roughly 30 students, with other low-category schools capping the classroom at 22 students.
Having a classroom with a large number of English as an additional language students (international students and families), I am required to do an extra government-compulsory assessment. I had to do 28, other teachers in my school ranged from 19–30, and other teachers in some other schools would only have to do 2-3.
I had a larger amount of government-enforced disability and disadvantaged children assessments. My classroom had 10, and other classrooms in my school would range from 0 to 10 as well. And other schools? Again, 2-3 usually.
Parental load is still there as well. I agree that it is not as high as it was in the category 7 school I worked in, but it is still there. With the addition of abusive parents, which I have unfortunately had to shield my classroom from.

These are just some considerations of the disparity in workload between classrooms and schools. The fact that one teacher is unlucky enough to have the same pay as another teacher with a much lighter load is ridiculous. Pay teachers overtime! It’s a solution, and here’s how.

A Solution: Pay Teachers Overtime!

Average out the number of students there should be within a classroom in that category of school. Create a fair number, i.e., a category school year 5 classroom should have 22 students. Any number higher than 22 is an increase in salary.
Look at the additional administration load per student. Each student that requires extra administration work that has a disability, severe social-emotional problems, has English as an additional language, etc. Each of these a teacher has above average should be overtime.
Teachers that organise out-of-school events, such as music, the arts, debates, and sports programs, pay them overtime.

Overtime hours can be worked out per term, as students come and go and numbers change throughout the year.

Paying teachers overtime is a chat that I have had with other teachers and principals, with everyone thinking it is a great idea… so far!

What are your thoughts? Anything you would add or change? Do you love the idea, or do you hate it?

I’m just trying to do my part and improve education for all students and teachers on this planet.