Around a fifth of secondary teachers and a quarter of all school leaders experience abuse from parents on school premises at least once a month, research into teacher stress has revealed.
The study also shows that teachers are working around 20 hours a week more than their contracted hours – with an average working week in secondary school hitting almost 53 hours.
However, despite this, it is the high job demands placed upon teachers that is the clearest predictor of stress, the research reveals.
The study by academics at Bath Spa University set out to chart the levels of stress within the education sector and the working conditions for teaching and support staff in schools.
The findings in the report – Education Staff: Working conditions and wellbeing – are based on surveys involving more than 7,000 education professionals sourced via three unions – UNISON, the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.
The study cohort included more than 6,000 women and around 1,000 men with an average age of 48. They included primary and secondary teachers, teaching assistants, and senior leadership team members.
It reveals that a quarter of secondary school teachers (25.7 per cent) face abuse from parents in person and on school premises “a few times year”, while 14 per cent report being abused once a month; 4.2 per cent reported receiving abuse a few times a month or even more frequently.
Roughly a quarter of the teaching assistants also reported face-to-face abuse from parents “a few times a year”, while 8.7 per cent said they received abuse once a month and 6.7 per cent a few times a month or more.
The figures were worse for school leaders, with 31.6 per cent reporting face-to-face abuse a few times a year, 13.7 per cent once a month, and another 13.7 per cent more frequently than that.
The respondents also revealed the extent to which they received online abuse from parents, with one in 10 secondary teachers reporting this a few times a year and two per cent receiving online abuse once a month. The figures were roughly similar for teaching assistants.
A fifth of school leaders, however, reported receiving online abuse from parents a few times a year, and around one in 10 reported it at least once a month.
On working hours, the report finds that despite having an average contracted working week of almost 34 hours, secondary teachers are clocking up almost 53 hours a week.
For teaching assistants, the average contract stipulates 29 hours a week compared to almost 34 being worked. And for school leaders, the average contracted working week was 35 hours compared to 45 hours a week being worked.
Elsewhere, the research revealed high reported job demands across all workers in education, especially primary and secondary teachers and high levels of perceived stress, with teachers again topping the chart.
The study, however, said that the only clear predictor of stress levels were a teacher’s job role demands.
The report states: “This is in line with previous academic and anecdotal evidence of stress in the workplace in general, which demonstrates that demands is one of the most impactful factors on employee stress. Indeed while anecdotal evidence suggests that teachers typically consider the negative experiences described (in the report) as part of their job, their stress levels are less likely to be negatively affected by them. However, the sheer amount of work that teachers have to do is the one factor which was clearly impactful on levels of stress in the profession.”
The same was true of teaching assistants, although in this case the quality of colleague relationships was also as strong predictor of stress levels.
The report adds: “In particular, the experience of negative relationships such as bullying and conflict in the workplace was also impactful on levels of stress. This may reflect the need to build effective working relationships between teaching assistants with the teaching staff they support, perhaps by providing greater appreciation of the necessity of the role that teaching assistants do.”
School leaders had three main predictors of stress – high job demands, student behaviour and long hours. The report states: “With regards to student behaviour, senior management are often required to address significant behavioural issues within schools, whereas classroom teachers are more likely to address low-level disruption, and this extremity of behaviour may be the root cause of the difference found between these two roles.”
Dr Jermaine Ravalier, senior lecturer in psychology at Bath Spa University and a co-author of the paper, said: “Many of the teachers we spoke to love what they do, however these findings paint a picture of a group of professionals that are under pressure from many quarters. As well as government cuts to funding, administrative demands, and increased class sizes, we also found that teachers work on average 20 hours per week more than they’re contracted to – this all adds up to long absences from work and unfortunately leads to many passionate teachers leaving the sector.
“It is a real shame that parents are adding to these issues by letting emotions get the better of them and treating teachers in an inappropriate manner. On-going training for teachers, to help manage confrontation, is needed as is investment in understanding the trigger points that cause the abuse so that school management teams can address this growing problem.”