European Trade Union Committee for Education

Project Background

The project, running from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2026, addresses the project aims at identifying and examining the evolution of working time arrangements across Europe in the education sector. Working time patterns and relative regulations have a considerable impact on the labour market and on job creation and retention in education. Namely to focus on labour market fragmentation across levels of education (primary, secondary, tertiary, VET) and across public and private education providers. The project contributes to analyse the division of working time related to teaching and non-teaching tasks of teachers and researchers. In fact, there exists a variety of arrangements, depending on the contractual nature teachers and researchers’ positions, that recognise in different ways the non-teaching tasks they are required to normally perform.

The project’s primary objectives are:

1. To identify and examine the evolution of working time arrangements across Europe in the education sector;

2. To analyse, complementing the previous objective, the division of working time related to teaching and non-teaching tasks of teachers and researchers;

3. To prepare education unions and to strengthen their capacity to successfully address changes in employment and work of the teaching profession and in social dialogue in the education sector.

Role of the Subcontractor

In the framework of the project, subcontracted research experts will provide an accurate comparative analysis of available data and regulatory acts related to working time in all EU Member States in the education sector and across all levels of education. To complement this study and create a general categorisation of the main models of working time arrangements, the research team will also regroup countries by their main features related to teachers’ working time. The researcher will then select a limited number of countries that represent each cluster and conduct in-dept interviews with the national education trade unions in order to develop a critical assessment of each model.

Call for tenders

For further information, including the specific tasks for the subcontractor and the timeline, please consult the complete call for tender here .