Civil servants take more days off sick than teachers despite an increase in absences from school. Teachers averaged six sick-days in 2001, compared to almost eight taken by employees of the former Department for Education and Employment in 2000. “It’s hard to believe that a civil servant’s job is more stressful than a teacher’s. Perhaps it is all the circulars,” said Eammon O’Kane, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers.