A quick gender critical overview
the impact of covid 19 On Primary school educators
At the Feminist Directory we think that it is important to observe the world through a gender lens. Data shows that the COVID19 pandemic has disproportionately affected many sectors that are female dominated such as Healthcare, Early Education etc.
The pandemic has also led to a rise in unpaid care work which is disproportionately falling on women. We have researched how this combination of factors is affecting women’s mental health, physical health, economic stability and professional lives.
This page is part of our series that explores the impact of COVID19 on carers/workers in the Education sector. The focus is on Primary School educators with a spotlight on experiences from Australia and the UK as well as present data from some international perspectives.
The UN states:
‘Teachers’ physical health was put at risk when required to provide face-to-face education for the children of essential workers and vulnerable children. Adding to the fear of being exposed to the virus was a fear of losing salaries and benefits, all while coping with increased workloads and family responsibilities. This is especially true of female teachers who had to continue teaching and bore a disproportionate share of family responsibilities.’
General Climate Pre-Covid
The teaching system in the UK was already under an immense stress prior to the onset of Covid19. The profession has been long undervalued. According to RSA ‘61% of the public believe that teachers are undervalued’.
Historically there has been a high drop-out rate of teachers in their first few years of teaching largely due to low pay and high levels of stress. According to the RSA, one in three teachers leave the profession after five years and one in seven newly qualified teachers leave during their first year of teaching.
It is estimated that around 15,000 teachers leave the UK each year to join an international school – and nearly half (47%) are dissatisfied with the British education system. “Our teachers spend twice as long as other teachers in high-performing OECD countries preparing lessons, assessing and looking at data. It is that, combined with low pay, which is driving teachers away. The very measures the government has taken to police standards are decimating the numbers of teachers in the classroom and lowering educational standards.” Donna Ferguson, The Guardian Newspaper, 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/oct/02/never-return-teach-england-refuge-abroad
Due to lower salaries, teachers tend to seek a secondary income to subsidise their primary income despite working long hours during term time. ‘There is evidence that more than one-in-ten teachers earn money elsewhere, as private tutors, examiners or creating teaching resources’ (Allen and McInerney, 2019).
Twenty five percent of teachers work more than 59 hours a week, putting in 10.7 hours on the average weekday. Over the past 25 years, full-time primary teachers have worked (on average) somewhere between 47 and 49 hours per week.
New evidence on teachers’ working hours in England. An empirical analysis of four datasets: https://johnjerrim.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/working_paper_teacher_hours.pdf
General Climate Covid
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers working from home juggled the increasing demands of their job with an increase in unpaid care work required at home : 68 per cent of primary teachers and 75 per cent of secondary teachers report working more hours per week during remote teaching. This pattern is common internationally – from the UK to Australia (see table: https://www.pivotpl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pivot_StateofEducation_2020_White-Paper.pdf)
The University of Melbourne gathered teacher’s experiences within their report exploring the impact of COVID19 :
“I’m getting up around 4am most mornings to finalise my day’s lesson planning and to do corrections. That way I’m available during class time for my students and during frees/recess/ lunch. I can then help monitor my three children’s schooling.”
“The pressure on us right now is enormous. It is difficult to manage healthy breaks away from work because parents and children and our leaders all require so much from us right now… It’s hell right now for teachers. A literal living hell.”
“I need to plan more. I do not actually have the time to plan more, though, as I am caring for my children at home. This is the major pressure for me.”
Nearly half of the teachers stated that they worked almost an entire extra day during this period, and some reported working in excess of 20 hours extra per week.
Report by University of Melbourne: https://education.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/3413996/Australian-Education-Survey.pdf
The impact on Teachers in Australian Aboriginal communities
It is important to highlight the array of experiences that teachers have had worldwide. The move to online learning relies on the assumption that all teachers and children have access to internet and computers as well as space set up learning at home. There are many children who do not have the access to technology to make online learning a possibility and many teachers who do not have a home setup to be able to continue teaching. This is acute in certain remote areas such as within the Aboriginal communities in Australia.
The AEU has been lobbying for fairer funding and resourcing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders from pre to post school education and has explored the reality for teachers during the pandemic. The lack of access to IT is a key concern.
“That’s had a massive impact on teachers’ workloads, whether preparing tutorial videos to share with families so they know what to click on, or maintaining all privacy and safety requirements … It is extremely challenging to have to teach both face-to-face and online concurrently.”
To give a sense of the scale of these issues, data from ROI on Australian Internet and Social Media Stats, 2019 show that:
- About 87% of Australians can access the internet at home. But only 68% of Australian children aged 5 to 14 living in disadvantaged communities have internet access at home.
- 49 per cent of primary teachers conducting home visits are doing them at least once per week.
- Some families moved out bush, and that of the school’s 340 preschool to Year 10 students, less than 100 were attending school daily during the crisis.
The concern around equity of access is especially apparent for primary teachers who indicate that they are less able to meet the needs of their students, communicate effectively and rely on adequate support from a parent or guardian.
“The worry is that teachers aren’t set up ergonomically, and we’re going to get a number of musculoskeletal issues – in backs, necks and shoulders – from bad workstations. Using new technologies and changed workplaces are big stressors for many people.”
http://www.aeufederal.org.au/our-work/indigenous
Overview of Australian Teachers workload
Teacher’s Perceptions
Although it is on a smaller scale than remote communities, teachers in cities and towns have also flagged the lack of equity in access to tech. There has been more investment in UK secondary schools in terms of tech provision. The less privileged primary schools are being left behind. This has increased the workload of teachers who prepare multiple forms of lessons based on whether tech is available to their students or not.
According to Nuffield research:
- In the UK the proportion of primary leaders providing IT equipment to their vulnerable pupils is half as high (33 per cent).
- Nuffield report on School’s responses: https://mk0nuffieldfounpg9ee.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/schools_responses_to_covid_19_support_for_vulnerable_pupils_and_the_children_of_keyworkerspdf.pdf
Special Needs Educators
Teachers and children without access to technology are not the only group who have been left behind in lockdown learning. The UN, the teaching unions and the World Bank are particularly concerned about vulnerable students who require specialist support. More than 80% of teachers were concerned about their students who have special educational needs – some being particularly vulnerable to Covid due to health complications.
‘Children with disabilities who were already marginalized before the outbreak are not always included in strategies of distance learning’. (United Nations)
According to Pivot Research, ‘distance teaching seems near impossible for special education. My students need constant monitoring and support as many lack independence, and many have disengaged with learning after years of not achieving for various reasons.’
“If they saw my face on Zoom, some of them would go into a meltdown because they’re highly autistic and they’d think what’s my teacher doing at home on my iPad. They wouldn’t be able to understand why I’m trying to teach them.”
“My students have access to technology, however it’s just a babysitter for them,” says Year 3 to 5 Special Education teacher Melissa Rabar.
https://www.pivotpl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pivot_StateofEducation_2020_White-Paper.pdf
Positives
The switch to distance learning has proved challenging for many teachers and students alike, in particular engaging with younger students via a screen. However, there have also been positive outcomes. Many teachers have become more innovative in their teaching methods.
“We had a quite a few new teachers who suddenly had a lot of kudos because they were so knowledgeable … They were sharing little workshops and how-to’s and cheat sheets, and working directly to help people set things up. That was really nice.”
“Connecting with the community has been vital, and the school employed a relief teacher to support this work”.
“I’ve been able to upload videos, and parents are sending photos of their children, and we’re connecting with each individual family at home at least twice a week.”
“I’m FaceTiming with the children – and the parents are there – and using filters: I’m a pizza, or a dragon, and they’re a bunny. You haven’t lived until you’ve talked to a four-year-old as a piece of pizza on Facebook!”
Australian Education Union: Learning From A Crisis:
http://www.aeufederal.org.au/our-work/indigenous
Economic Impact
Teachers are compromised financially and personally as a result of the pandemic. They have worked increased hours, many have had to supplement the purchase of technology for remote teaching and many have missed out on the usual summer holiday period which balances out the long hours during term time.
Forty nine per cent of primary teachers conducting home visits are doing them at least once a week which has in turn increased working hours without increased pay.
Another side effect of the pandemic is that pastoral and welfare support that is usually provided by outside practitioners is running at a very reduced rate and therefore teachers are attempting to plug the gap and help where they can. On top of their already increased workload. There have also been reports of teachers buying phones for their pupils and other essentials where they usually would depend on free school meals.
‘Other forms of welfare support highlighted by senior leaders include: providing their own food banks, toys, book vouchers, clothes and even financial support for utilities (e.g. electricity) to support parents. These findings demonstrate how schools have provided a wide range of support to pupils and their families during the pandemic. However, this high level of support may not be sustainable should the partial closure of schools continue or new waves of lockdown occur.’ – Nuffield
Teachers Providing Welfare Support
Health Risks
Teachers have continued to work through the pandemic. They have provided essential care and education to the children of key workers alongside online teaching. The former means an increased risk of contracting the virus. Internationally this has been a huge stress for teachers, further exacerbated within communities where access to sanitation is limited.
Reports from Australian teachers to the Australian Education Union :
‘Out in the community we’ve been told to keep a metre-and-a-half between each other, and we can’t go to a playground, get our hair cut, or sit in a restaurant – but teachers are to work in a classroom with 29 children? I don’t feel safe.
Things can get tricky in junior primary, where there’s a wet area with one tap and four outdoor toilets with a tap in each, used daily by four to five classes.
When we ran short on sanitizer, wipes and disinfectant many of us had to go out and buy them because back orders took a while to fill’ Marlow.
http://www.aeufederal.org.au/our-work/indigenous
In addition to physical stress, many teachers have reported a profound effect of remote working on their mental health.
‘I am never anxious about returning to school after the holidays. I am anxious now because everything is uncertain, we are in danger of dying from a pandemic and I don’t know what we are going to do to cope and support our students” (Primary school teacher, Scotland).
‘In our specially commissioned YouGov TeacherTrack survey of 820 school teachers and school leaders, carried out by pollsters YouGov*, a third (34 per cent) told us that the mental health and wellbeing of themselves and their families is causing them greater anxiety and stress at the moment.’
‘It is a totally different way of working, plus I have my own two small children at home. Trying to do work with my 4 year old, plus organise work and be available for my 31 students, and look after my 2 year old, is stressful as my husband is still working full time”. (A primary school teacher, Yorkshire)
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/covid-19-and-social-mobility-impact-brief/
Health Risks continued
The impact on mental and physical health of teachers has frequently been expressed after the technical, pragmatic and workload issues. Some teachers even report that they are thinking of leaving the profession altogether due to the pressure that they are under.
‘It’s definitely added significantly to my workload and taken the holiday time that would normally provide some respite, meaning I am closer to burnout than ever.’
‘I struggle to sleep at night for thinking about work all the time. I’m very stressed and anxious; my physical health has been impacted’.
‘Going through this, not feeling safe, and then seeing teachers belittled in the media, has made me come to the realisation that I don’t want to teach anymore’.
The impact on the mental and physical health of teachers was frequently expressed — after the technical, pragmatic and workload issues. Some even report that they are thinking of leaving the profession altogether due to the pressure that they are under.
‘It’s definitely added significantly to my workload and taken the holiday time that would normally provide some respite, meaning I am closer to burnout than ever.’
‘I struggle to sleep at night for thinking about work all the time. I’m very stressed and anxious; my physical health has been impacted.
‘Going through this, not feeling safe, and then seeing teachers belittled in the media, has made me come to the realisation that I don’t want to teach anymore’.
Further Reading
Education during COVID-19 and beyond:
‘I will never return to teach in England’ : UK teachers finding refuge abroad
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/oct/02/never-return-teach-england-refuge-abroad
New evidence on teachers’ working hours in England.
An empirical analysis of four datasets: https://johnjerrim.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/working_paper_teacher_hours.pdf
‘Exhausted beyond measure’: what teachers are saying about COVID-19 and the disruption to education
Support for vulnerable pupils and the children of keyworkers: https://mk0nuffieldfounpg9ee.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/schools_responses_to_covid_19_support_for_vulnerable_pupils_and_the_children_of_keyworkerspdf.pdf
Australian Education Union : Learning from a Crisis
http://www.aeufederal.org.au/our-work/indigenous
Covid19 and social mobility impact report : Sutton Trust
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/covid-19-and-social-mobility-impact-brief/