Japanese teachers continue to work the most hours among educators in major countries and regions, according to a survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The weekly working times for full-time teachers in Japan were 55.1 hours at junior high schools and 52.1 hours at elementary schools, according to the 2024 OECD survey released on Oct. 7.
Both times were four hours shorter than in the previous OECD survey in 2018 due to workstyle reforms.
In Canada, we are contracted to be in the building for ~6 hours of work a day, but for employment insurance purposes, it is considered an 8 hour day. The expectation is that every 6 hour in-building day has about 2 hours of work at home. Obviously, this is largely untrue: there are weeks where I work exactly 30 hours, and weeks where I work 60 hours dealing with every assignment, test and paper all coming in at the same time. But, in the surface, it is legally recorded to be a 40 hour work week even though those are not the hours I am required to work.
No idea how, exactly, this relates to Japan’s situation, but I thought it could be interesting for context.
Edit: Okay, I actually read the article, and it does talk about this.
Where a Japanese teacher spends 17.8 hours a week on teaching, I spend ~22 hours (trying my best to omit in-school prep time, which is not uniform week-to-week).
For further comparison, I definitely spend far fewer hours on lesson preparation, as we tend to share a lot of our lesson plans across teachers, probably spend close to the international average on administrative tasks, and spend like… maaybe 1.2 hours pre week on extracirriculuars. And those extracurricular hours are also pure optional: I can simply just say no and not do it.
I think is is fascinating how much time Japanese teachers spendon extracurriculars and administrative tasks, in particular. I find myself cursing the inefficiencies that lead to a lot of that administration time, as I often feel we could save a lot of time in that space. I wonder if Japanese teachers have similiar issues.
That’ll, er, teach me to just go by the graph.
Thank you for your insight.
Hey, I also had immediately reacted to the graph and headline without reading, and came back to do the edit afterwards. I’m right here with you, fam. It was just an interesting topic point for me, so I dug in a little more.