Jenny McFadyen, 47, is married with three sons aged 18, 13 and 11. She teaches French and German three days a week at Trinity school, Nottingham for around pound;18,000.
The family live in their own home around 40 minutes drive from the school.
She went into teaching after five years in marketing, and despite the workload, has loved the job.
From day one I knew I had done the right thing,” she said. “And I have never regretted it.”
Mrs McFadyen gets up at 6.10am and makes breakfast for the family, puts on a load of washing, and leaves at 7.30am to do the school run before going at work.
She leaves work at around 4.45pm, with work to do at home. While her husband cooks dinner, she will do marking and lesson preparation, before the family sit down to an evening meal.
“It is very, very busy,” she said. “I usually have an hour and a half of work to do in the evenings, and on Wednesdays I sing in the choir at the local Catholic church. Sometimes I don’t know how I fit it all in, but I would hate it any other way.”
After dinner, there are more chores, before a few hours in front of the television before bed. During term, although she loves reading, there is little time to do it.
“The same book sits on my bedside table all term and only gets touched from one holiday to the next - I just can’t switch off enough to read, even though I love it. The workload has definitely gone up, because of the endless demands on the state sector to produce all the different types of reports and testing, even though we are lucky at this school that we have a very good management team and we have an hour free every week, which helps.”
On her days off, Mrs McFadyen will spend at least half a day on the home computer preparing lessons and worksheets for school.
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