Estonia to study teachers’ working time allocation
Estonia’s Ministry of Education is launching a study of teachers’ working time to determine their tasks, the time needed to complete them, and prepare recommendations on work organization within the legally established working week. The estimated cost of the study will be €70,000, ERR News reports.
What will be studied
The ministry plans to determine which teachers’ duties are defined by current Estonian regulations and how much time teachers and school leaders estimate is needed to perform them. The recommendations are to be prepared for education policymakers, school owners, principals, and teachers themselves.
Liis Legiste, an adviser at the Department of Education Management and Teacher Policy, said that the state seeks to support teachers and help create good and sustainable working conditions so that they remain in the profession. To achieve this, she said, it is necessary to better understand the factors affecting teachers’ workload and their ability to cope with work.
Workload beyond lessons
Under Estonia’s Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act, a teacher’s working time includes direct teaching and educational activities, as well as other tasks provided for by the employment contract, job description, work organization rules, or employer’s instructions. A government regulation adopted in 2013 sets a 35-hour working week for teachers.
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In addition to conducting classes, teachers prepare lessons, provide feedback on students’ work, communicate with parents, cooperate with colleagues, and work with students individually. Data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey, TALIS, indicate that teachers often assess their actual workload as greater than their officially defined working time.
The study is also expected to show how a teacher’s age, gender, experience, career stage, qualifications, position, and type of contract affect the range of tasks and workload. The role of the language of instruction, school level and type, region, school and class size, and the availability of support specialists will be analyzed separately.
The survey will cover teachers and leaders of general education and vocational schools. The ministry expects to determine the tender winner in the autumn, and the study results are to be ready within 14 months.
