55.5 Hours: Leaders' Record-Low Week, Still 8.6 More Than Teachers'

This is the education commute. 55 and a half. 55 and a half. Wow. That is quite the number to kick us off with today. It really is. And if you are a school leader, that number is basically your life right now. Oh, absolutely. But before I tell you exactly what that figure represents, I want to set the scene a little bit. I want to talk about exactly where you probably encountered it this morning. OK, set the scene for us. So, picture this scenario. You receive an email, right?

It's 20 to 8 in the morning. Right in the middle of the morning rush. Exactly. It's been forwarded by a colleague who absolutely means well, I promise. And the subject line reads something along the lines of some good news on workload for a change. Oh, I know exactly the kind of email you mean. You open it up and it's a link to a news piece about a government survey showing that teacher working hours have fallen to their lowest level on record. Right. Which is, you know, technically speaking, entirely true.

Entirely true. Yeah. But here's the reality of that exact moment. You're reading this headline in the car park, right? Right before you walk into the building to start your day. And something about it just does not sit right with you. You read it and you cannot immediately put your finger on what is wrong with the picture. And because you can't quite articulate it, you immediately feel this, um, the strange sense of guilt. Yes. You feel guilty because you realise you aren't actually pleased by what is supposed to be objectively good news.

Exactly. And that guilt is the exact feeling we need to unpack today. Because, I mean, nobody is lying to you in that email. The figures are totally real. Right. But to understand why that totally accurate headline still lands so strangely on the person reading it at 20 to 8 in the morning, we really need to look closer at what was actually measured. I agree completely. So, I am sitting in the reader's chair today with the actual data in front of me. And I know you are taking the leadership chair.

I am, yeah. Because the deputy or the head or whoever forwarded that email this morning is talking directly about your world. They absolutely are. So, I will definitely be looking at this from the perspective of the leadership team. But before we get into those numbers, let's establish our source. Good idea. What is the exact document we are looking at today? So the document is called working lives of teachers and leaders Way for way for okay, and who is that published by it is published by the Department for Education, right?

It was originally published on November 27th 2025 and it was last updated on April 30th this year So everything we are discussing today comes directly from their summary report. Okay, that gives us a solid foundation Now let's be incredibly clear about the mechanism of this survey before we dive into the data Yes, definitely. Because how they collected this information absolutely matters for what we can and cannot say about it later. What exactly is this survey, mechanically speaking? That is such a crucial point. Mechanically, it is a survey where people are asked to report their own hours for one specific reference week.

One reference week. Just one. And I really want to emphasise this. So there's no confusion later on. These are not timesheets. Right. They are not an administrative return. Nobody stood at the school gates and counted anyone in or counted them out. This is entirely self-reported data for one single week conducted at scale. So we are essentially dealing with two realities at once here. It is the best national picture we currently have. Yes. But it is fundamentally still just people estimating the length of their own working week.

Both of those things are true at once. Yeah. And I would much rather state that up front than have it feel like some kind of gotcha moment later in the show. No, that's completely fair. So let's play the prediction game because I really want to guess where the numbers actually landed. All right. Let's play. I want you to guess the leaders' average working hours in 2025. Okay. And I will give you a hint. Is the lowest figure this series has ever recorded across all four waves of the survey?

Oh, wow. Okay. So what is your guess for the lowest ever recorded working week for a leader? If it is the absolute lowest ever recorded, I'm going to try and be pretty generous here. I mean, let's say 49 hours. 55.5. Wait, 55 and a half hours a week is the best it has ever been. 55 and a half is the best it has ever been. Let me just read you the exact sentence from the report because it's striking. Pusteer. Leaders' average reported working hours were 55.5 per week in 2025, a decrease from 56.

6 per week in 2024, And also the lowest average working hours recorded in the working lives of teachers and leaders series. That is just staggering when you actually hear it out loud like that. I mean, what were the figures in the earlier waves before 2024? So in 2023, the figure was 57.4. Okay. And in 2022, it was 56.8. 56.8 down to 55.5. So if we look at the fall over those four years, the leadership week has only come down by about an hour and a bit.

Exactly. And if you look at the drop from last year, specifically, you know, from 56.6 down to 55.5. Yeah. That is a fall of exactly 1.1 hours. One hour and six minutes. Right. That is the big improvement from last year. One hour and six minutes. And look, we do need to acknowledge that this is a real fall. It's moving in the right direction. Absolutely. And we are not going to sneer at any reduction in working hours. No, of course we are. but now we really need to look at the teacher's hours because that is the actual headline that everybody read in the car park this morning.

Let's look at all teachers. For 2025, the figure is 46.9 hours. 46.9, okay. Yep. It is down from 49.4 in 2023, and it's down from 48.7 in 2022. Got it. The report plainly states that teachers reported lower working hours than in all previous waves. So when you look at both groups side by side, teachers and leaders, both of their hours fell. Both groups fell. Yeah. And they fell by almost exactly the same amount. Really? Yeah. Teachers' hours went down by 1.2 hours. Leaders' hours went down by 1.

1 hours. 1.2 and 1.1. And that right there is the exact thing that wasn't sitting right when you read the email in the car park. Exactly. The celebrated improvement is basically about an hour. But the gap between the leadership week and the teachers week is still massive. It is. Let's actually do the arithmetic on that gap. Because if you subtract one published figure from the other, so 55.5 for leaders, against 46.9 for teachers, the difference is 8.6 hours. 8.6 hours. Yes. But I have to offer a very crucial warning here.

Oh, what's that? I must explicitly caution that this This subtraction is strictly our own arithmetic. It is not a finding presented in the report. The report does not present that 8.6 as a gap. But when you put two of their own numbers side by side like that, any leader reading both figures is going to do that exact sum in their head immediately. Oh, absolutely. You can't help but do the maths. I mean, eight and a half hours is basically a whole extra working day. It really is.

What happens when we strip away the part-time staff and just look at the full-time figures? Let's look at those for full-time leaders. The figure is 56.5 hours Okay, 56.5 and for full-time teachers it is 50.1 hours Wow Both of those numbers are the lowest in the entire series and both of them are still six and a half hours apart six and a half Hours. So if we were writing the completely honest version of that news headline, it would really say something like Um, everyone's week got a little bit shorter, but the leaders week is still the longest it has ever been compared to anyone else working in the building.

That is a very, very fair way to summarise it. And you know, there is a second number hiding underneath that headline, which I think is actually the more revealing one. Oh, what did you find? Well, we need to look at what is actually inside the week itself. Okay. For full-time leaders who still teach, they reported spending 11.8 hours in the classroom during the reference week. 11.8 hours. Right, but back in 2022 that figure was 13.3 hours. 13.3 down to 11.8. So the amount of time spent in the classroom is actively shrinking inside the leadership week.

Yes, it shrank from 13.3 down to 11.8. And meanwhile, if you look at the teacher's figure for teaching hours, it barely moved at all. Really? What was it? They reported 23.3 hours of teaching. Yeah. Which is essentially the same as the year before. Okay, so we can do something very specific from this. What's that? The teacher's week got slightly shorter, but it stayed the exact same shape. Yes. While the leader's week got slightly shorter, but it actually changed shape. That is precisely what those two lines in the data tell us.

The shape of the week is fundamentally shifting for leaders. Okay, let me push back on this for a moment. Sure. Because I can just hear somebody listening to us and getting genuinely irritated. They might say, um, look, this genuinely is good news. Why are we finding the cloud in it? I mean, the hours are down. Why are we dissecting it so critically? No, you make a fair point. You do. And there genuinely is good news in this report beyond just the hours. The satisfaction numbers moved as well, and they moved pretty significantly.

Oh, let's hear those. Let me give you the real climes here. 54% of teachers and leaders said they were satisfied with their job most or all of the time. 54%. Yeah. And that is up from 49% the previous year. And it's up from 46% the year before that. Now that is a substantial climb. It gets better. When they were asked if they had an acceptable workload, 26% agreed. 26%? Yes. That is up from 22% in 2024. And it's up from just 17% in both 2022 and 2023.

Wow, okay. Furthermore, 39% said they had sufficient control over their workload, which is a really big jump from 26% three years ago. Let me just stop you at that workload figure though. Yeah. You are saying 26% agreed that their workload was acceptable. Correct. And that 26% is the big improvement. Yes, 26% is the improved figure. This brings us right back to reality, doesn't it? I mean, if 26% finding their workload acceptable is our improvement, it means that roughly three quarters of the profession still does not agree that their workload is acceptable.

Right. That is the stark reality of the data. And the reason I wanted to read all of those numbers to you is to show that the direction of the data and the level of the data are two completely different arguments. They really are. The direction is genuinely pointing up. But the level of the 26% is where people actually live and work. Yeah. And this brings us to a very honest concession we have to make about this entire survey, doesn't it? It does. We have to make it very clear.

The honest concession is that this survey tells you exactly what changed and it absolutely refuses to tell you why. Right. There is no causal explanation provided in this document whatsoever. The survey does not attribute a cause for why the hours fell. So we can't make assumptions. We cannot suggest that it was due to new reforms or changing policies or staffing levels or better technology or literally any other explanation. Any attempt to do so would simply not be in the text. We can only tell you what the document actually says.

Fair enough. So we know the direction, we know the level, and we know the gap. But there is one more area we need to explore and it directly impacts the leadership chair. What's that? What does this data say about promotion? Ah, yes. This is where the numbers get really complicated for the future of the profession. Go on. Among the people who stated they were not pursuing promotion, the most common reason they gave was concerns about the potential impact on their work-life balance. I can imagine. What was the figure?

27% cited this as their reason. 27%. Has that figure changed from previous years? It has fallen slightly, actually. It was 30% in 2024, and it was 31% in the two years prior to that. Okay, so a small drop. But I mean 27% is still a massive portion of the workforce looking upward and saying no, thank you Well, of course they are because that fifty five point five hour week isn't just a statistic about my current week as a leader It is the advert for the job Exactly and the staff sitting in your staff room are watching that advert play out every single day They see it happening in real time.

What does the report say about the people who are looking to leave entirely? For teachers and leaders considering leaving the state school sector altogether, high workload and stress or poor well-being were the two most commonly cited reasons. No surprise there. And both of those reasons were reported by 89% of the people considering leaving. 89%. 89% for both of them. Let's connect these retention and promotion figures to the lived reality across different types of schools. Let's do it. Because how these numbers land depends entirely on which of the three rooms you were standing in.

Right, the three rooms. Break that down for us. Let's start with a primary setting. In primary, the leader is usually also a teacher. True. So that figure you mentioned earlier, the 11.8 hours of classroom time, that isn't an abstraction. That is your own timetable. The vital question to ask there is whether the classroom time that came out of your week was actually replaced with leadership duties, or if it was just replaced with more work overall. That makes perfect sense. And when you step into the second room, a secondary setting, the dynamic shifts completely.

It does. In secondary, the leadership group is much bigger, which means that a national average hides a widespread of realities. Yes. A national average doesn't tell you which colleague is working well under that 55 hours, and which colleague is working well above it. Uncovering that isn't about looking at a data set. It requires an actual conversation. It really does. And then you have the third room, which is the specialist setting. This is where that 27% statistic regarding promotion lands the absolute hardest. Because the pool is smaller.

Exactly. The leadership pipeline in a specialist setting is already smaller to begin with. So if just two people look at the workload and decide not to step up, that is no longer just a statistic. That is a failure of your succession plan. That is a really sharp way to look at it. Yeah. So if you want to test how these numbers are truly landing in your own building, here's the kettle question. The kettle question. Yes. Next time you were standing by the kettle at break time, ask the person next to you, would you take my job?

Oh, that's good. And when they answer, listen to the reason they give you. Exactly. And here is a similar question for your governance. If a governor asks at the next meeting how workload is going in the school, How do you answer? Right. Do you answer with a policy? Because if you answer with, we have a well-being offer, that doesn't tell them anything concrete. You should answer with an actual figure, an actual thing that was physically stopped this year. Absolutely. Because naming one single thing that was actually stopped is a far better answer than naming three new initiatives that were introduced.

Without a doubt. And we actually covered this concept in an earlier episode on workload, where we discussed the department's workload toolkit and its menu of things to stop. Oh yes, I remember that one. You can find that in our back catalog, but I have to give a strict warning here. Yes, very important. Do not mix the numbers from that toolkit document with the numbers we are discussing today from this survey. They are entirely separate. Completely separate. Well, before we wrap up, let's pull the four main things off the drive to recap what we've learned today.

Okay, let's hear them. Number one, leaders average 55.5 hours a week in 2025. That is the lowest figure the series has ever recorded. Number two. Teachers averaged 46.9 hours. Both groups fell by a very similar amount, which means the gap between the two weeks remains essentially unchanged at around eight and a half hours. Right. Number three. The week changed shape. Full-time teaching leaders reported 11.8 classroom hours, which is down from 13.3. And number four. 26 percent agreed their workload was acceptable, which is the best in the series.

However, 27% of those not seeking promotion cited work-life balance, and 89% of those considering leaving named workload or stress. Yep, and we have to end this recap on the fundamental caveat of this entire report. These are self-reported hours based on a single reference week, from a survey that tells us exactly what changed without ever saying why. If you want to look at the numbers yourself, you can find the show notes and the printable one-pager for this episode over at theeducationcommute.co.uk. And while you were there, I highly recommend checking out the two free newsletters we have available there.

It's one designed for staff and another one specifically for parents and carers. Safe trip in. See at the gates.