Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2013 February 13 - 19 [LABOR]

Teachers work more than 90 hours overtime every month

Teachers work an average of 90 hours of overtime a month, according to an interim report of a survey that the All Japan Teachers and Staff Union (Zenkyo) released at its annual congress on February 16.

Zenkyo conducted the survey on teachers’ working hours for the first time in 10 years.

According to the report, teachers spend nearly 70 hours working overtime in schools and about 21 hours working at home on average every month.

Junior high school teachers work the most with average overtime at more than 100 hours a month. By age, younger teachers work longer than their older colleagues. Teachers aged between 20 and 25 work an average of 102 hours and 24 minutes a month and those aged between 26 and 30 work 98 hours and 27 minutes.

The report also points out the clear relation between class size and the number of overtime hours worked.

The number of overtime hours worked by a teacher with more than 35 students per class is 23 hours longer than that of a teacher whose classes have less than 30 students.

Among the 6,400 teachers who responded to the survey, 80% say that they have much work to do and 72.2% say that they have insufficient time for preparing lesson plans.

Based on the survey results, Zenkyo will launch a movement seeking a drastic increase in the number of teaching staff and the implementation of effective measures to reduce teachers’ workloads.