Teaching Around the Clock: Putting Teachers’ Working Time on Europe’s Agenda
Across Europe, teachers are working far beyond their contractual hours. Lesson preparation, administrative duties, digital tasks, and growing responsibilities often spill into evenings and weekends. This hidden workload fuels stress, burnout, and teacher shortages—threatening the quality of education and the sustainability of the profession.
To address this urgent challenge, ETUCE brought together education unions, researchers, and policy experts in Rome for the first conference of the EU project “Teaching Around the Clock: Unveiling the Reality of Working Time and Compensation for Teachers in Europe.” The goal: to make teachers’ working time visible, understood, and politically recognised.
The event opened with the presentation of research mapping working time models across Europe and highlighting the tension between teaching and non-teaching tasks. Participants then engaged in working groups to share experiences and identify the psychosocial risks linked to excessive hours, such as stress and work-life imbalance, and to discuss how unions are responding.
Experts provided evidence on how extended working time impacts well-being and professional autonomy, while plenary sessions showcased good practices from unions—ranging from collective bargaining on schedules to legal frameworks safeguarding preparation time. These examples demonstrated that solutions exist, but they require strong social dialogue and coordinated action.
This conference was a starting point for a shared ambition: to ensure that teachers’ time is respected and regulated, and that working conditions enable quality education for all. ETUCE will continue to work with its member organisations to advance this agenda and keep teachers’ voices at the heart of European policy.
