The calculation doing the rounds: 18 teaching hours and 172 school days

18 teaching hours and 172 school days: the teachers’ pay equation

According to the account that sparked the debate, «a state-school teacher earns 2.200 euros in 14 payments, works 18 hours a week and enjoys three months’ holiday». Almost none of that survives scrutiny. The portrait began with a chat with a state-school teacher, and it was taken apart, point by point, by those sitting on the other side of the table: fellow staff, concertada (state-subsidised private schools) teachers and a civil servant who makes no secret of it. The argument is not about how much affection the profession deserves, but about arithmetic. And the arithmetic here is rigged in both directions.

How many hours a week does a secondary-school teacher work?

The 18 teaching hours exist, but they are blackboard hours, not work hours. In Madrid the minimum is 20, with cases of 21 hours of direct teaching, to which five cover duties and another five of management are added: department meetings, tutoring, interviews with families. In Extremadura the figure rises to 22 on-site hours, including department meetings.

And cover duty is not a chat in the staffroom. It means covering classes, dealing with incidents and standing in for an absent colleague, in schools where staffing is tight. Add to that staff meetings, assessments and seminars that in some secondary schools require staying one fixed afternoon a week. A teacher’s real working day, by their own calculations, comes to five or six hours a day at school, plus time at home.

172 school days: the figure repeated in the school-year calculation

The most widely shared calculation breaks the calendar down month by month: December with 13 school days, January with 17, April with 13, July and August with zero. The total comes to 172 class days a year. Another source rounds it to under 175 and adds the other side of the balance: some 190 days a year when no classes are taught.

That margin is not what it seems either. June is worked in full, because when classes end the administrative paperwork arrives, and at the end of August teachers return to bureaucracy before the kids start. Holidays, certainly. Three months, no.

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27% of public employment to serve 16% of the population

Here comes the most uncomfortable figure for the cushy-job narrative. Non-university and university teaching staff together account, according to the calculation that opens the thread, for 27,27% of Spain’s public employees, by far the largest group. Health accounts for 19%, local councils another 19%, and the justice, security and defence block barely 14%. The rest, administrators, 20%.

• Teaching and universities: 27,27%
• Health: 19%
• Local councils: 19%
• Justice, security and defence: 14%

Within universities, which are 6% of the total, one in three employees is administration and services staff: there is one PAS (administrative and service staff) for every two lecturers. And the teaching workforce as a whole serves, by the same calculation, 16% of the population, while health covers 100% of the population 365 days a year. The population of compulsory school age, the post notes, is 15,5% of the total. The comparison, launched as an accusation, also turns against whoever uses it.

In money, and according to what is noted in the thread, starting salaries range from 1.800 to 1.900 euros net in 14 payments for an FP (vocational training) teacher, depending on the region, and this month those with a permanent post have taken home between 3.600 and 3.800 euros including the extra payment. It is not poverty. Nor is it the paradise some paint.

Are grades inflated in private and concertada schools?

The study cited in the thread came from the University of Granada. The starting hypothesis was to prove that concertada and private schools massaged grades compared with state schools, by comparing the school’s mark with the selectividad (university entrance exam) result. The result turned the script on its head: inflation existed, yes, but it mainly affected female students, and it occurred equally in state, concertada and private schools. Male students got similar grades at school and in the external exam.

The finding did not fit the expected framework and was sidelined. At the same time, there are testimonies of grades being adjusted in state schools, with tutors resisting publishing marks until they were tweaked to save someone’s year. The public-private boundary blurs when you look at the small print: some argue that private schools have tended to pay less and demand more hours a year, while state schools maintain better conditions.

What the payslip does not pay for: putting up with teenagers

Teacher pay is almost always compared with working hours, never with wear and tear. Some argue that dealing with teenagers is a hell that the supermarket cashier would not tolerate better paid or with more respect, and others recall that many who criticise the job would not set foot in a classroom even for double the salary.

On the other side weighs a simple argument: if the conditions are so good, let them sit the competitive exams. What is not seen from outside is temporary employment, teachers stringing together substitute posts between two pools in two regions, moving every few months, with gaps in between. Staff retire at 67, like the rest of civil servants since 2009, so turnover is not what many imagine either.

What can be expected next school year

With these ingredients, the conversation about teacher pay will keep swinging between the figure that bothers each side: blackboard hours are fewer than the hours worked, but the workforce is the largest in public employment and serves a small fraction of the population. Pressure is unlikely to ease, because demography works against it: fewer young people, an inverted pyramid and a heavier burden on health than on education. What will not change, barring surprises, is the habit of arguing with the neighbour’s payslip in one hand and a badly counted calendar in the other.