A third of teachers have spent more than half of this half-term break on school work, a TES survey has found.

The poll of more than 1,000 teachers reveals the extent to which school staff use their week out of the classroom catching up with planning, marking and bureaucracy.

Rather astonishingly, one in 10 teachers say that they have spent more than 70 per cent of their time off on school-related graft.

Teacher leaders have latched on to the survey results as evidence of an increasing workload among the profession. Just 6.4 per cent of the survey’s respondents spent less than 10 per cent of the week-long break working.

One wrote: “Having two days ‘off’. Not sure when else I can do all the paperwork. Not sure that anyone outside of teaching has any inkling of what goes on behind the scenes.”

Another said: “Half-term should be renamed ‘work from home or in school without children’ week for teachers.”

Commenting on the survey’s findings, NUT deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney said: “It comes as no great surprise that so many teachers find their half-term consumed by work.

“Successive workload surveys have shown the extraordinary additional hours the profession puts in. Teachers also increasingly tell us that much of their work is not about preparing better lessons or providing good feedback.

“In the NUT/YouGov survey of teachers from December 2013, 63 per cent of teachers said that more than a fifth of their workload does not directly benefit children’s learning.”