European Trade Union Committee for Education

European teachers in primary, secondary, and higher education play a vital role in shaping future generations. Yet, they face long working hours, heavy non-teaching tasks, and inadequate pay. Beyond teaching, their workload includes curriculum planning, student assessment, parent communication, and extracurricular activities, leaving little time for personal or professional growth. Low salaries in many European countries further strain their financial well-being. This project supports the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in Education (ESSDE) Work Programme 2024-2026 by equipping education trade unions to engage with employers on improving working conditions. Key priorities include fair pay, career prospects, contractual status, and work-life balance—essential steps to making teaching more attractive.

• Introduction
• Conferences

Teaching Around the Clock:  

Unveiling the Reality of Working Time and Compensation for Teachers in Europe  

The dedication and commitment of European teachers in primary, secondary, and higher education are indispensable for nurturing the minds of future generations. However, behind the scenes lies a stark reality characterised by extensive working hours, exacerbated by the burden of non-teaching tasks, and compounded by inadequate compensation. While teaching forms the cornerstone of their duties, teachers and researchers are also tasked with curriculum planning, student assessment, parent communication, and extracurricular activities. These non-teaching tasks consume a substantial portion of their time, leaving little room for personal or professional development. Moreover, the relatively low salaries prevalent in many European countries fail to commensurate with the level of dedication and effort exerted by primary school teachers, exacerbating their financial strain. 

The proposed project’s outcome feeds into the priorities and activities of the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in Education (ESSDE) Work Programme 2024-2026, by preparing education trade unions to successfully discuss with education employers on how to support teachers, academics, school leaders and other education personnel, with the aim of making the teaching profession more attractive by ensuring quality jobs and decent employment conditions, such as working time arrangements, and addressing fair and equal pay, contractual status, career prospects and rewards.  

Project’s objectives 

1. To identify and examine 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 unclear organisation of working time of teachers and researchers is closely linked to several aspects of their working conditions, such as salaries, gender-pay gap, occupational health and safety, and work-life balance. The organisation of working time in education is among the main elements contributing to decrease the attractiveness and the status of the teaching profession;  

2. To analyse, complementing the previous objective, 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. To this purpose, also the impact of digital tools and services on performing ancillary tasks needs to be assessed as an element that potentially leads to an increase of non-teaching tasks during and outside working hours; 

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 by committing education unions to be more active in promoting national social dialogue and to represent the needs of new and young teachers through professional development and members’ education. 

Research 

This project aims at filling a considerable gap that exist in the comparative analysis of working time arrangements of teachers across Europe. For this reason, a highly qualified and skilled research team will provide an accurate comparative analysis of available data and regulatory acts related to working time in all EU Member States. 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.  

Consortium  

ETUCE and 3-4 member organisations, ensuring geographical balance.  

Project’s partners commitment  

Participation to the 4 Advisory Group meetings (2 in person and 2 online) of approximately half day each, plus the 2 conferences, each of them lasting 1.5-day. Travel and accommodation expenses covered by the project’s budget.  

Contribution to the research interviews and support to the research team. 

Possible support required in the organisation of the conferences, particularly if the hosting country.  

Duration of the project 

24 months. The start of the project is expected around April 2025 (if the proposal is selected by the European Commission).