The Unpaid Hours of Teachers

Whether it’s evenings, weekends, or “holidays”, the hours don’t stop for teachers — just the pay

From the first bell of the school year to several weeks in, teachers in many countries are effectively working for free. Evenings, weekends, and so-called holidays are swallowed by planning, marking, admin, pastoral care, and extracurriculars. For teachers, the work keeps coming, but the pay doesn’t follow.

When teaching depends on unpaid labour, quality and consistency suffer, and the strain is already visible. Our cross-market survey of 252 teachers across the UK, Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain reveals just how deep the issue runs.

When it comes to education policy, confidence is low. Over three-quarters of those surveyed believe the government isn’t doing enough to compensate for overtime working, and nearly as many say too little is being done to reduce the burden in the first place.

When those charged with delivering education no longer trust the system to protect their time, the result is predictable: frustration turns into burnout, and classrooms are depleted. Unless action is taken, the profession risks being stripped of its workforce, and students of their chances.

To expose the scale of the problem, and to point to solutions, we used the survey data to identify the date in the school year when teachers actually begin being paid. This marks the moment when, after accounting for salaries and the countless hours of unpaid overtime, teachers finally stop working for free. 

Because time is the scarcest classroom resource, we also explore how practical, classroom-safe AI tools can help teachers take back hours from time-consuming tasks, such as planning, marking, and admin, without compromising professional judgment or student privacy. By making the hidden hours visible, we can help give teachers their time and their autonomy back.

The day the pay finally starts for our educators

There’s a moment each year when teaching finally stops being effectively unpaid. From the first bell of the term until that date, the job still gets done, from planning and marking, to emails, trips, and club organisation. But the pay hasn’t caught up.

This year, these dates are arriving painfully late in some countries. In Germany, teachers don’t hit their first truly paid day until 17th January 2026, almost 100 school days into the new year. The UK doesn’t cross into paid territory until 4th December 2025, more than a full term after school starts. They are followed by Italy  on 14th November 2025, and Austria on 12th November 2025, both more than ten weeks into the year. Even Spain, the best of the group, doesn’t reach its paid work day until 21st October 2025, over seven weeks from day one of the new term.

What pushes these dates so far ahead? The extra hours teachers give, week after week. In term time, German teachers add around 18 hours beyond their contracts each week; the UK adds 14, Austria and Italy around 12, and Spain eight. It’s this quiet, essential labour that keeps lessons rich and students supported, and it’s the reason why the accurate pay dates land so deeply into the calendar.

The school day you don’t see

Ask teachers what fills their unpaid hours, and the answer is remarkably consistent across countries, with planning, marking, and making resources taking up the most time. In a typical week during term, lesson planning takes the biggest slice of overtime, followed by grading and marking, and resource creation. 

The next tier is the quiet-but-constant work that keeps schools running, such as staff meetings and communicating with parents and students. Progress reports and professional development are not far behind. Admin-heavy tasks like curriculum development, data analysis and trip planning account for another meaningful chunk of time, and even supervision, classroom setup and stock-taking contribute to unpaid hours.

Taken together, these figures show that the hidden workload is more than just a handful of stray emails; it’s core teaching work done off the clock. These tasks aren’t optional extras, they’re the foundation of good lessons and calm classrooms. 

But when they spill into unpaid time, teachers pay with their evenings, their energy, and their wellbeing, with two in three (67%) saying the long hours regularly harm their mental health, and two in five (41%) dreading the return to school after holidays. It’s also exactly where smart tools can help, by accelerating planning, adapting resources, streamlining feedback, and summarising data, so more of this essential work happens inside paid time.

Even when schools are closed, teachers keep working

For teachers across the UK and Europe, the holidays aren’t a true break. While children take the time off, teachers are planning, marking, and writing reports, all quiet hours that don’t show on a timetable but keep the system moving.

Holidays become the only time in which teaching staff are free to think ahead, so around one in five teachers spends their holiday time planning lessons, and approximately one in seven are marking tests or making resources. With fewer daily interruptions, bigger-picture tasks can encroach too, such as curriculum tweaks, professional development, data tidying, trip planning, and getting the classroom ready for the coming academic year. The break, in other words, isn’t really a break; it’s when teachers do the work that makes the next term possible.

What’s interesting is the variety of approaches that different countries take — the contrast is striking. German teachers spend the equivalent of more than five full working weeks each year — a third of their entire holiday time — working. In the UK, the burden lasts almost three weeks, while Austrian and Italian teachers also give up around a fifth of their holidays. Even in Spain, where our survey shows the unpaid workload to be the lowest, teachers still hand back over a week of their supposed break to the classroom.

The time off that’s meant to restore teachers is therefore routinely filled with unpaid school work. Those hidden hours not only eat into time for crucial rest, but they also help to explain why teachers are essentially working for free so deep into the year.

Back-to-school nerves and how AI can give time back

September should feel like a fresh start, not a knot in the stomach, yet 41% of teachers say they dread going back after the holidays. The workload hasn’t gone anywhere, and many education professionals aren’t getting much help from tech: 49% say they never use AI to tackle the time-consuming task of marking, and another third aren’t using it for job-related data analysis. In other words, many are still doing it all by hand.

Adopting AI can feel like one more thing on an already full plate, with new tools, new rules, and real worries about data and quality. Adding to this challenge is a lack of support. According to The Future of Education Report 2025, three-quarters of teachers in Europe receive no training in AI at all, even though 56% say they want to upskill in this area. 

The way forward with AI is to pick one low-stakes task, set simple guidelines, and try two shared prompts as a department. A short, opt-in demo with a colleague is often enough to turn curiosity into a small, reliable time-saving habit, without changing anyone’s teaching style or sharing student data.

Practical ways AI can help to take back time

Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent shares practical ways to reduce after-hours work:

“If you only try one thing, make it lesson planning. Ask AI for a sequence, success criteria, and two differentiated tasks, then refine it in your own voice. Even small gains in preparation time add up to a significant difference across the term.

“Resources can be multiplied quickly. Take one core text and turn it into a quiz, worksheets, and a vocabulary list. You stay in control, AI simply accelerates the drafting.

“For marking, don’t hand over your professional judgement. Instead, let AI build the scaffolding. A comment bank and rubric can be generated in minutes, leaving you to apply your expertise where it matters most.

“Data can become next steps. Paste anonymised scores and ask for three clear priorities with suggested starters for the following week’s lessons.

“Even the admin can be lifted off your plate. Start trip letters, report blurbs, or meeting notes as bullet points and let AI produce the first draft, you simply add names and details.

“Confidence comes from clear rules. Agree on approved prompts and a simple ‘what not to paste’ rule, such as no names, marks, or personal information. Small, consistent guardrails like this can unlock everyday efficiencies.”

The goal isn’t to “techify” teaching. We want to win back the hidden hours for teachers so more of the job fits inside paid time.

Sources and methodology
Survey Design and Sample
A survey was conducted among 252 teachers across the UK, Austria, Germany, Italy and Spain. The survey collected self-reported data on overtime during both term time and school holidays. Respondents represented a range of teaching levels (primary, secondary, and upper-secondary) and were asked to estimate the time they spent on tasks beyond their contracted hours.
Processing and Averaging

• Overtime (term time): Average country-level term-time overtime figures were used to find weekly overtime hours. This figure formed the basis for the “average weekly overtime” values used in the calculation of unpaid term-time work.
  
• Distribution of overtime: Overtime task distribution times were coded into task categories (e.g., marking, lesson planning, administration, extracurriculars) to contextualise how unpaid hours were spent.
  
• Holiday work: Responses to Q3 were averaged to estimate the mean number of hours teachers spend on school-related tasks during holidays.
  
• Holiday task distribution: Responses to Q4 were analysed qualitatively to identify key activities that occupied teachers’ holiday time, providing explanatory context alongside the quantitative averages.
  
  

Integration with Secondary Data
The self-reported averages from the survey were then combined with secondary data:

• OECD Education at a Glance 2024 for average salaries.
  
• National holiday schedules for the number of school holiday weeks per year.
  • Germany 
  • UK 
  • Austria 
  • Italy 
  • Spain
    
• EU average working hours (1,530 per year; approx. 40 per week) as a baseline for standard full-time work.

Formulas and calculations

• Weekly and annual overtime wages were estimated by multiplying reported overtime hours by the calculated hourly wage (salary ÷ working hours).
  
• Holiday overtime burden was derived by multiplying average weekly holiday hours by the number of holiday weeks.