At the end of 1998, the European Agency for Safety and Health at work organised a conference on “The Changing World of Work” in an attempt to highlight the impact of the developing social and economic environment on stress and health and safety. The conclusions of the conference highlighted the many new challenges Europe had to face in order to improve health and safety and minimize stress in the workplace.
The Malta Union of Teachers has repeatedly emphasised the fact that the issue of teachers’ work related stress and their health and safety should be taken very seriously and all employers and parties concerned (governments, agencies and so on) should cooperate at all levels to reduce work-related stress effectively. This requires a collective approach and a joint effort to prevent, monitor, manage and reduce stress.
More than half of England’s teachers expect to leave the profession within a decade because of stress, bureaucracy and heavy workloads. Figures show that 53 per cent of teachers and lecturers in primary, secondary and university education do not expect to be teaching in 10 years’ time. This is also starting to happen in Malta as a number of teachers are leaving the profession and seeking alternative jobs. A lot of teachers in Malta are also facing excessive workloads, increasing clerical work, the tension and stress relating to the Performance Management Programmes, inspections in class and the recent School Audits. Teachers feel undervalued, overburdened and powerless to do anything about it. Female teachers especially suffer as a result of conflict between the excessive demands of work and home. Large classes make it more problematic for the teacher to maintain an adequate disciplinary climate. There is no doubt that the quality of teaching suffers when teachers work under difficult circumstances, and it is important to take this aspect into consideration and not separate the debate on educational and pedagogical reforms from the debate on improving teachers’ working conditions.
Highly stressed teachers let work dominate their lives to such an extent that instead of coping with their stress they take work home, cutting back on their social and family lives. During the discussions leading to the Reform Agreement between the government and the Malta Union of Teachers, MUT officials regularly stressed this point and appealed to the government to at least minimally reduce the teachers’ workload. The government’s reaction was not a positive one. The teaching load in primary and secondary schools in Malta is one of the highest in the European Union. Teachers have to spend long hours preparing lessons and correcting homework. The new retirement age is also a grave cause for concern. Most teachers will be burnt out after at least 25 years’ service, let alone at the age of 65! Stress and burnout is the major occupational illness among teachers. There is little acknowledgement among policy-makers of the pervasiveness of stress in teaching and its impact on the quality of teachers’ personal lives, on their class-room practice and on the school community in general; and national strategies are still lacking in a number of countries including Malta.
Undoubtedly, teaching is one of the professions most affected by stress. The increasing workload on teachers and the problem of unacceptable pupil behaviour in schools are two of the tendencies being identified in several European countries as leading to a rise in stress-related illnesses. Other factors that may come into play in stress-related illnesses affecting teachers could be disappointment and frustration, socio-economic aspects, school environment, lack of social recognition and organisational aspects of school administration.
Consequently, teachers’ unions should have a better understanding and an increased capacity to exchange information and best practices on how to tackle work-related stress.
During 2007, ETUCE launched a project whose main aim was to improve expertise and to exchange information and best practices on teachers’ work-related stress.
The partner organisations and members of the Project Steering Committee was made up of six unions, namely The Swedish Teachers’ Union (Lararforbundet), the German Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW), the Portuguese Teachers’ Union (FNE), the Slovenian Union of Teachers (ESTUS), Solidarnosc from Hungary and the Malta Union of Teachers, which was represented by Rita Catania, MUT’s assistant Secretary. Anthony Casaru’, MUT’s International Secretary is also doing sterling work in this field and is CMTU’s representative on the European Advisory Committee on Safety and Health at work.
The final event of a series of teachers’ work-related conferences took place in Malta last November. The project’s final conference aimed at providing national teacher trade unions with comprehensive guidelines and practical examples for an effective implementation of the social partners Framework Agreement on work-related stress in the education sector.
If work-related stress is to be tackled in an efficient way, the involvement of workers and their representatives is crucial. According to Directive 89/391, the responsibility to put in place the risk assessment system, and thus the analysis of the stress factors, lies with the employer. According to the ETUCE survey results on teachers’ work-related stress, risk assessment systems for work-related stress are being put in place in work places in 14 out of 27 (EU and EFTA) countries. In seven out of the 14 countries, this system is based on legislation and collective agreements. As regards the implementation of the risk assessment system in schools, only seven countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Slovakia and Sweden) out of the 27 represented in the survey have implemented such a system in their schools.
The MUT will continue to inform and raise awareness on teachers’ work-related stress risks and to lobby the government and other employers in education on the need for immediate action to tackle stress at work. The MUT will continue to lay emphasis on the importance of involving school management in the process of tackling work-related stress for all teaching grades, always in consultation with the workforce.
The Malta Union of Teachers expects political commitment towards Occupational Health and Safety and Enforcement of Legislation that can only be achieved if the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) is provided with better funding, more human resources and the ability to issue administrative fines. The government should acknowledge and rectify autonomous framework agreements signed by the social partners at European level. The MUT insists that the provisions laid out in Subsidiary Legislation 327.12 “National Minimum Conditions for all Schools Regulations” be respected in toto.
Mr Bencini is the president of the Malta Union of Teachers