Employees in the education sector are increasingly working overtime
Half of the teachers regularly work overtime. 50 percent indicated that they worked an average of six extra hours a week last year, reports the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
Picture: Type tank
The agency presents today Numbers about working outside official time.
Regular overtime in the pedagogical sector has increased from 2013 to 40 percent in 45 since 2017. Childcare workers and educational support staff also fall under the pedagogical sector, explains Tanja Traag, spokesperson for Statistics Netherlands: “Look at all employees all sectors, then you can say that the overtime remains stable. Only healthcare and the pedagogical sector stand out. ”
In the healthcare sector, overtime work decreased for the first time in 2017 compared to the previous year. Only in the pedagogical sector does regular overtime only increase from 2013, according to the CBS figures.
Primary education
Primary school teachers take the cake. 61 percent of them indicated that they regularly worked overtime in 2017. One in five teachers said it sometimes happened.
The percentages are slightly lower in secondary education. There is also a difference between teachers who teach a general subject, such as mathematics, and a vocational subject. In 2017, 48,6 percent of teachers who taught a general subject indicated that they regularly worked overtime. The percentage of colleagues who teach a vocational subject and regularly work overtime is 43,6 percent.
Professors
In higher education, slightly more than half (53 percent) of lecturers and professors regularly worked more hours than the contract included in their contract. Education experts and other teachers also regularly report overtime with almost 2017 percent.
These percentages are higher than the average. In 2017, 29 percent of all employees indicated that they regularly worked overtime. This involves an average of six hours a week.
Autonomy
Traag: “We know from other studies that teachers indicate that they do not have much autonomy over, for example, their working hours or their days off. They cannot easily determine this for themselves." Low autonomy and high work pressure, among other things, can lead to health problems. The previously published figures on burnout are an indication of this, according to Traag. In education, 22 percent of employees indicate that they suffer from burnout complaints compared to 16 percent in all other industries AOb concluded in the study at the beginning of last year: 'Time spent by primary and secondary school teachers' that teachers work overtime structurally.
The high workload and low salary formed the basis for the relay strikes in primary education in recent months. Teachers are getting increasingly larger groups and through appropriate education more often special needs students in the classroom. They also have to deal with a great administrative burden. These are the reasons that the AOb also on September 12 calls on the primary school teachers in South Holland and Zeeland to stop working.
