NINETY-ONE per cent is a number that deserves our attention.
It is the proportion of teachers in Northern Ireland who reported moderate to high levels of work-related burnout in research by Dublin City University’s Centre for Collaborative Research Across Teacher Education and St Mary’s University College, Belfast.
Even more strikingly, 95% identified workload as a contributor to burnout.
These figures should not be used to point fingers. They should be used to start a conversation, because behind every percentage is a teacher trying to do their job well.
The findings will be formally presented at a research and practice conference for teachers in St Mary’s in Belfast on October 23.
Teachers enter the profession to teach, support children and young people and make a difference. Yet, the job they do today is considerably broader than what happens between the classroom walls.
Teachers are managing increasingly complex needs, responding to parents, completing administrative requirements, adapting to change, and trying to meet the expectations of a society that quite reasonably wants the very best for its children.
The research provides an opportunity to pause and ask: are we asking too much of the people on whom so much of our education system depends?
The answer is not straightforward. Education is complex and the pressures experienced by teachers cannot be attributed to one policy, organisation or decision. But the pattern in the findings is difficult to ignore.
Workload was overwhelmingly the most frequently identified contributor to burnout, yet that’s one component – significant as it is – in a much broader picture.
Along with workload, teachers identified unrealistic parental expectations, organisational issues, expectations within schools, supporting pupils with additional needs, and school culture among the factors affecting their occupational wellbeing.
This matters because teacher wellbeing is sometimes discussed as though it begins and ends with the individual.
We tell people to be resilient, to look after themselves, establish boundaries and manage stress. All of these things have a place. However, there is a limit to how much resilience we can reasonably expect from any profession.
If the working environment is generating sustained pressure, wellbeing cannot be addressed solely by asking individuals to cope better with that pressure.
This is not an argument against the work being undertaken by the Department of Education, schools or school leaders, nor is it an argument for pretending there are easy solutions.
Education systems have finite resources. Teachers are working with children and young people whose needs are increasingly diverse. Parents rightly expect schools to provide high-quality education and support, while governments must respond to changing societal, economic and educational demands.
The question is how we make all of these expectations sustainable. That might mean asking different questions when new initiatives are introduced.
How much additional work does this create for teachers? What can be removed or streamlined? When expectations change, are schools given sufficient time to adapt?
When teachers are supporting pupils with increasingly complex needs, do they have timely access to the specialist expertise and resources required? And when we ask schools to do more, are we also asking what they can reasonably stop doing?
These are not questions about lowering standards. They are questions about making high standards achievable.
The research also reminds us that workload is not simply about the number of hours teachers spend in school. It is about the accumulation of demands: the tasks, responsibilities, expectations and emotional labour that increasingly accompany the role.
Teaching is relational work. A teacher can finish the formal school day but still carry unfinished conversations, concerns about a pupil, preparation for tomorrow, emails from parents and the mental load of trying to meet the needs of every child in the classroom.
That invisible workload matters. So too does the emotional dimension of teaching. Teachers are not simply delivering a curriculum. They are supporting children through difficulties, responding to individual needs, managing relationships and often absorbing pressures that originate well beyond the school gates.
Yet, despite all of this, teachers continue to turn up. Perhaps that is why these findings should not be understood as evidence of a profession that has lost its commitment, but as evidence of a profession telling us that commitment alone cannot sustain the system indefinitely.
There is another finding that should give us pause: 46% of teachers reported that they did not anticipate remaining in the profession long term.
Recruitment is important. But retention is equally important. Experienced teachers carry knowledge, relationships, professional judgement and institutional memory that cannot simply be replaced by recruiting another new entrant.
If teachers leave prematurely because the conditions of the profession become unsustainable, the consequences extend beyond the individual. They are felt by schools, pupils, colleagues and communities.
This is why teacher occupational wellbeing needs to move beyond being considered an additional strand of education policy. It belongs at the heart of the conversation about the future of teaching.
We should not ask teachers to choose between caring about their pupils and caring about themselves, nor should wellbeing become another item on an already crowded professional checklist.
Instead, we need to think about wellbeing as a shared responsibility: the government has a role; departments have a role; school leaders have a role; parents have a role; and teachers themselves have a role.
The research gives us something extremely valuable: the voices of Northern Ireland teachers themselves. They have identified where many of the pressures are coming from.
We now have an opportunity to listen, not defensively and not with blame, but constructively.
Teacher wellbeing is not a soft issue. It is not an optional extra, rather it is part of the infrastructure of a successful education system.
If we want to continue to attract talented people into teaching, retain experienced professionals and ensure that teachers can give their best to children and young people, then we need to make the profession sustainable within Northern Ireland.
The question now is not simply how we can help teachers cope with pressure. It is what we can do, together, to make teaching sustainable for the people who choose to dedicate their working lives to it.
Paul Hazzard, Associate Lecturer, St Mary’s University College, Belfast
Professor Catherine Furlong, Dublin City University
Dr Sabrina Fitzsimons, Dublin City University
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