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An anonymous application to UK summer schools reveals the shocking truth about some summer terms and conditions, writes Rebecca Armstrong
For those who enjoy teaching youngsters, working at a summer school in the UK can be an extremely rewarding experience, as well as bringing in some extra money during the summer months. However, summer schools often have a poor reputation – low pay for long hours of tiring work. So, posing as an English teacher, I went undercover to discover whether this is deserved.
I claimed to be a Celta-qualified teacher with a PGCE, having taught juniors in Japan and currently working at an international school in Spain. I wanted to know what the pay was and what this included, how many teaching hours were required and how many for preparation and marking, and how many onsite hours there were.
I emailed 22 institutions offering summer schools and have received thirteen replies to date. Of these replies, all were very quick – eleven came back on the same day and none took more than a week to respond.
One of the best was St Edmund’s College, which acknowledged that ‘many summer schools are not well organised and staff are often not treated well’. They said they were ‘fortunate in that we operate our own summer school. Conditions and pay are the best on offer and professional standards are maintained.’
So did they measure up? Well, at £330–615 per week, depending on experience, qualifications and level of responsibility, the wages are among the highest on offer. Contact teaching hours are 29 per week, which includes twenty spent in the classroom and a whole day on an off-campus study visit. Teachers are expected to be present 8.30am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday, but there are no boarding duties or weekend duties.
Accommodation and full board are included. However, there is no time allocated for marking or preparation. The school said, ‘You would be expected to spend an appropriate amount of time preparing, planning and marking work’ but who’s to say what’s appropriate?
At £350.95 per week, St Bede’s International Summer School is the next best paid. This is for fifteen to twenty teaching hours and prep time is allocated, but the website didn’t say how much. In response to my email, I was directed to the school’s website. It’s also a very long day – 7.00am to 11.00pm. Teachers are required to get the children to breakfast, cover meal duties and on- and off-site activities and residential welfare. There is some free time during the afternoons for preparation, but otherwise it has to be done in the evenings. Teachers get three free afternoons and one free day.
CERAN UK also scores quite highly. At £320 per week, the salary is better than most and there are very little extracurricular responsibilities. The day starts at 9.00am and finishes at 4.00pm, Monday to Friday, and because teachers don’t run extramural or sporting activities, they’re free from 4.00pm and at weekends. Bed and board are part of the deal, and the school says ‘there is no sharing of rooms’. Lessons are devoted to speaking and listening so there is little in the way of marking. According to the school, ‘Preparation is at the teacher’s discretion – clearly as professionals we all do as much prep as necessary to deliver high-quality lessons.’
‘There is no point pretending that our teachers don’t have to work hard,’ said Discovery Summer. And they weren’t kidding. For £310–£360 per week (depending on experience) ‘all staff have to sign a 48-hour week waiver and in practice work 55–60 hours a week’. Even at the higher rate this comes to just £6 per hour, only just above the national minimum wage of £5.35. Staff have one day off teaching a week, but are expected to use this time preparing for class. UK law says that you should not have to work more than 48 hours per week, but that you can choose to opt out if you wish. This is controversial and in 2005 the European Union made moves to abolish the opt-out.
Weymouth English Centre offers two contracts, with different responsibilities and pay scales. The first includes fifteen hours of teaching plus six two-and-a-half-hour weekday social and sports activities and one weekend day excursion. The pay scale is £371–£411, depending on experience and qualifications. The second has the same teaching hours with none of the extra supervision, paying £220–£260. Nothing was said of prep or marking time.
Now things start getting really bad. Oise directed me back to their website, but did give a telephone number should I want to discuss the position further. They pay £295 per week, with an extra £25 per week for returners (which wouldn’t apply to my fictional teacher). This is for 22.5 teaching hours per week, plus assisting with getting the children up in the morning and to bed in the evening and meal time and homework supervision on a rota basis. I couldn’t find anything about time spent on prep and marking.
Cambridge Language and Activity Courses (CLAC) were among the poorest payers – £275 per week, ‘with free board and lodging’. There was a maximum of twenty teaching hours per week ‘but you would never teach a full timetable; free lessons are given for time to prepare lessons’. This sounds low, but it works out at £13.75 an hour, not great but significantly more than Discovery.
I was quite shocked at the salary paid by Embassy CES. At £245 per week for residential teachers, it was already very low (the second lowest of those that gave a salary), but they also deduct £29.05 every week for accommodation. There is a £5 per week per full year Tefl experience and per yearly return to Embassy (up to a maximum of three years) but I suspect that comes as cold comfort after losing nearly £30.
Teachers at Embassy work thirteen sessions per week (including teaching and extra activities), which is 39 hours in total, and have one day free. No time is allocated for preparation or marking, so that will occupy much of a teacher’s free day.
The dubious honour of worst payer goes to Stafford House, which pays its summer school teachers just £236 a week, with an extra £18.47 for one full year post-Celta experience and £32 for three or more years. A teacher/activity leader does fifteen hours per week plus eight sessions on activities and excursions, a teacher/excursions leader teaches 22.5 hours per week with reduced activities.
All teachers are required to be onsite for fifteen sessions or around 45 hours a week, so any time not spent in class or on excursions is given over to marking and preparation. The residential positions ‘obviously include some mealtime duties and some night time supervision’.
EAC World was another centre that directed me to its website. Teachers are required to work 39 hours per week over six days with one day off per week. Teachers on the zigzag programme (morning and afternoon teaching) teach for thirty hours per week with nine allocated for marking and preparation. Those on the non-zigzag programme teach fifteen hours in the mornings only, with another 24 hours spent on supervising daytime activities. I couldn’t find the salary anywhere, so I have no idea how much teachers will earn for all this work.
Three institutions had something of a stay of execution. Cambridge Centre for Languages don’t offer residential courses and Manor Courses had filled all their positions. Lines sent a job description but I couldn’t open it; they also asked me to advise them of a suitable time for them to call me to discuss the jobs further.
So it would seem that summer schools often do demand long hours with little compensation. In addition to teaching hours, preparation and marking, teachers are expected to supervise social activities, oversee meal times, wake children in the morning and settle them at night. Many of the schools made much of their free board and lodging, but on a residential course this should really go without saying.
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