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Nursery teachers work five hours a week for free

Education professionals are among those most likely to work unpaid overtime hours, according to analysis published by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to mark the ninth annual Work Your Proper Hours Day.

More than 11,500 pre-primary education teachers (nursery teachers in schools) worked an average of five hours overtime a week in 2012. This amounts just under half (48.7 per cent) of all nursery teachers in schools in total and is worth over £67m in terms of extra hours of work.

A regional breakdown shows that Londoners are the most likely to do most unpaid overtime, with over one in four workers regularly putting in extra unpaid shifts.

The TUC believes that while a lot of unpaid overtime is down to heavy workloads, which employers need to manage better, much of it is also down to pointless presenteeism – with staff judged on the hours spent at their desk rather than the work they do.

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