“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Mark Twain
The alarm clock goes off, and you wake rested and ready for the day. Outside your window a bird happily sings; the sun is shining, your packed lunch has miraculously packed itself, the morning coffee is hot and strong, and all is right with the world. It is time to go to work.
Most teachers start the day with a bit of unpaid voluntary labour. Just for the craic.
When you get to school each morning look at the carpark. Most teachers will be into work anywhere between half an hour to an hour before school starts. This is not directed time, and is not part of the 1265 hours. So if you’re in your class working and preparing for the morning, that is the “voluntary labour upon which schools depend” in action. Since a teacher’s time is worth approximately £30 an hour (depending on where they are on the scale), and you might have 30 cars in the carpark at 8.30am, that’s a lot of free labour. 30 x (£30/2) = £450. Do that over 185 days and it’s £83 000… for one small school.
There are 21227 teachers in Northern Ireland (based on 2022-23 data), so if each of them got to work 30 minutes early each day to prepare, that would be free labour to the tune of:
(21227 x £15) x 185 = £58.9 million. Every year.
Just from rucking up early in the morning.
Registration and Directed Time.
In some schools teachers are asked to supervise the arrival of students, check uniform, etc. However, if the school day starts at 9am, and teachers are asked to do this from 8.30am, they should have a separate contract for this role or – if they volunteer to do these tasks – it is best practice for a Principal to add this to that teachers’ directed time. Vice Principals and Principals, however, have a different contract, and no such restrictions on them are currently in place.
When the morning bell goes directed time starts – and that is normally with registration. While all aspects of registration are directed time, and therefore out of the 1265 hours, there is a difference in terms of “contact” or “non-contact” registration.
Just taking an accurate roll is considered non-contact time (supervision), and will not count toward the 23.5 hours (post-primary) or 25 hours (primary) limitations. However once teachers have to deliver any content to students (such as PSHE) then registration has become contact time (teaching), and counts toward the weekly totals.
Assemblies
Attending an assembly, including periodic assemblies such as Easter or Christmas, is a supervision role, and therefore not counted as contact time in the weekly tally. It is, however, directed time, and must be accounted for in the DTB.
Delivering an assembly, as opposed to merely attending one, is both directed time and contact time (teaching), so counts toward the 23.5 / 25 hours contact time limits.
Form teacher duties
Form teachers generally have a series of other duties to perform as part of that roll, such as:
Monitoring attendance; chasing up notes, contacting parents about attendance, distributing and collecting documents for parents (medical forms, etc), delivering PSHE lessons as per school policy, receiving and distributing announcements.
Time for these duties must be included within their Directed Time Budgets. To this end many Principals will include one or more “Form Teacher Periods” on the DTB, which are aimed at offsetting the time for these FT duties each week.
Checkpoint – if your FT duties are taking more time that you are allocated you need to speak with your LM / Principal to have the DTB adjusted.
Break duties
Most schools depend on teachers doing periodic duty at breaktime, and this is normally done on a rota. Teachers are not entitled to a break at breaktime, so the 15 / 20 mins of break is directed time. Therefore break duty time must be on the DTB.
Note: even though teachers will rarely be on duty every day of the week, TNC 2024/2 states:
“7.7 Supervision
Supervision occurs when a Teacher is asked to engage in activities outside of the classroom where there is no active teaching taking place. Supervision may include tasks such as morning and afternoon breaks, wet break times, arrangements for the arrival and departure of pupils, bus supervision, school assembly, examinations etc. Where a Teacher is not required to supervise at morning or afternoon break, or where this is done on a rota basis, this period must still be defined as directed time.“
Therefore all breaktimes in the week should be considered directed time, even if a staff member does not have to do a duty on a particular day.
Lunch duties
Teachers are entitled to an undisturbed break of 30 minutes between 12pm and 2pm each day, and teachers cannot be directed to supervise at lunchtime unless they have a separate contract to do so.
There is no obligation to stay on the premises during your lunch break.
Lunchtimes are unpaid for teachers, and are not part of the DTB.
After school duties
Teachers will usually be directed to help with some duties after school, such as bus duty or managing a detention. These are a little different to break duty, as they’re occurring outside of the standard school working hours. Therefore they’re handled a bit differently in DTBs, with most schools just adding the requisite time to the DTB to cover them.
For example, Mrs Fletcher works in a school where teachers cover detention twice a year, and bus duty once a week. School finishes at 3.30pm, with detention running for an hour from 3.45pm. Bus duty is for 20 minutes immediately after school, once a week.
To calculate the DT for this Mrs Fletcher works out the number of minutes of bus duty first. That is 37 weeks x 0.333 hours, giving a total of: 12 hours 20 minutes. To calculate detention she multiplies the detention time (1 hour) by the frequency (2 times a year) to give 2 hours. However, detention starts at 3.45pm, so there are 15 minutes of “trapped time” to add in too. So it’s 15 x 2 minutes, plus 2 hours, giving 2 hours and 30 minutes for the detention.
Total evening directed time = 14 hours and 50 minutes.
Designed and produced by teachers and trade unionists. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information on this site, members and representatives are advised to contact their own trade union reps before taking action which might leave them in breach of contract. © 2024 think1265