This blogpost, republished from FFT Education Datalab, reports findings from Nuffield Foundation-funded research conducted into teacher health and wellbeing.

Much has been written about the working hours of teachers over the last five years, and it is something we have blogged about previously as well.

One of the reasons why this has become such a hot topic among teachers, school leaders and education policymakers is that working hours are thought to be linked to teacher wellbeing. That is, the more teachers work, the more stressed they become. This, in turn, potentially impacts upon their mental health.

Yet there has actually been precious little attempt to quantify this relationship. How strong is the link between working hours and teacher wellbeing? And does it matter how those working hours are comprised?

This blogpost – drawing upon evidence from a new paper I have just published with colleagues, using TALIS 2018 data from five English-speaking countries – starts to fill that gap. (TALIS is the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey.)

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