It is the throwaway joke every teacher has to gamely laugh off, but it rings increasingly hollow for the overwhelming number of teachers spending much of their Easter break working.
Indeed, overburdened headteachers are now contacting an advice line for support as they face the prospect of a work-filled “holiday” with no chance to recharge their batteries before the onset of the exam season.
“I can think of a few who have said ‘I will be working the whole way through Easter’, and they have their own families. It should be a time to rest and recuperate, but they can’t do that,” says Skye Kennedy-Cullen, a counsellor and case manager at the Education Support Partnership’s helpline.
Career progression
In her experience, more teachers are doing work from home rather than school - and not just heads. She is seeing “a lot of pressure”, especially on NQTs, to work thorough breaks.
“I think there’s a pressure on teachers on their class’s exam results. It certainly seems to have shifted since I was in school, in that it’s not the pupil’s responsibility for their own results; it’s their teacher’s responsibility.
“I certainly see an increase in teachers having a panic on ‘how do I pull my class up’. There’s a feeling that ‘if I work harder, maybe they will do better’, and that is reflected in how a teacher is viewed in school, and career progression.”
Her experience is echoed in the results of a snap online Tes survey which paints a stark picture, with 96 per cent of teachers saying they are working during the Easter holidays.
For primary teachers, 62 per cent are working at least three days - with more than one in 10 working between five and 10 days. In the secondary phase, the figures are higher still, with more than 71 per cent working at least three days.
There’s a feeling that ‘if I work harder, maybe they will do better’
A YouGov poll conducted for Tes last year found a similar picture over the summer break, with more than two-fifths of teachers (44 per cent) spending the equivalent of 10 days - or a third of their holiday - on school-related work (see bit.ly/LostHoliday).
Unsurprisingly, lesson planning and marking figure highly, but 29 per cent of secondary and 5 per cent of primary teachers say that they are running revision sessions ahead of GCSEs and Sats.
The NASUWT teaching union could potentially instruct its members to refuse to take part in such sessions if a motion being discussed at its conference tomorrow is passed.
It notes “the bullying of teachers into running ‘booster’ and revision classes after school, at weekends and during holiday periods”, and calls for Ofsted to include work-life balance in its frameworks.
Sats booster sessions are a particular concern for NUT teaching union general secretary Kevin Courtney. “That should not be happening at all,” he says. “We should remember that Sats are not a grading of the child. We should not be putting children through this experience, and the government has to realise that they are giving entirely the wrong suggestion by the importance they put on Sats results.”
While many teachers are told holiday sessions are voluntary, Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL teaching union, believes the way that teachers and schools are held to account means they are now compulsory in all but name.
“It has always been the case that teachers will do some marking and preparation during the Easter holidays,” she acknowledges.
“It’s become almost a requirement - ‘you don’t care enough about the children’
“It’s one thing if it’s done in their own time under their own direction, but the growth of revision classes that require teachers to in effect be in school during their vacation to do extra work, when they are already doing more unpaid overtime than other professions, it’s something else. It is, in effect, lengthening the school term.
“It’s become almost a requirement - ‘you don’t care enough about the children’.
“The pressures of accountability and the lever of performance pay progression - it’s pressure being put on teachers to be present.”
A DfE spokesperson stresses that school leaders and governors have a clear duty to support the welfare of their staff - including promoting a healthy work-life balance.
She says: “We have published a clear action plan setting out the steps we will take to help tackle this issue, which includes a programme of targeted support for schools.
“There is no silver bullet to solve this, and we don’t underestimate the challenge, which is why we want to continue to work with the profession to explore new and innovative ways to address it.”
