Teachers in England work longer hours than their counterparts in many other countries but there are fewer slackers among them, research for the FFT Education Datalab has found.

Its research associate John Jerrim, a professor of education and social statistics at UCL Institute of Education, said his findings were a “testament” to the profession but also showed there was minimal slack.

He found that unlike in some other countries, teachers in England did not have to work excessive hours “to cover for their workshy colleagues”.

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Professor Jerrim compared data from 50 countries and found teachers in England worked longer hours than most of those elsewhere.

But England bucked the trend for countries with longer average hours to also distribute those hours more unequally.

England was “slightly better than other nations at equally sharing this load”, the research found.

Average working hours of teachers were longer in England than most other countries because “we don’t have any slackers”, Professor Jerrim said.

“Even the 10 per cent of full-time teachers in England reporting the shortest weeks puts in a shift of around seven hours each weekday. This compares with an international average for these teachers of around six hours each weekday.”

Those with the longest working weeks were doing longer hours than were teachers with the longest weeks in other countries.

Professor Jerrim concluded: “This result is in many ways testament to our teaching profession. They work hard, but share this burden as much as they can. But it also means that we don’t have much slack left in the system.”