Do you think school teachers in Japan are overworked?

From my brief stint as a teacher in Japan I found that teachers spends so much time doing pointless, unnecessary tasks.

I taught in Komaki and I spent as much time working as I did in the US. I love teaching and the time and attention to lesson plans are fun and you can be as creative as you want. I worked a lot but I loved the job, so I felt fine about the hours I put in.

One tip is to address the needs of the students and the end goal of achieving them. Then make the process as entertaining as you wish. With a little bit of making the study a little fun and connecting the subject to an end goal, centering service to the audience is self-satisfying and workable to the students.

I found that I had to take different approaches in Japan but the end was still successful. Play to your audience. I wish I'd never left Japan. The hours of work were worth the time.

Mr Kipling, I have the same experience. Far too much time is spent in useless admin and meetings.

Teachers here do so much more work than their counterparts in North America. Teacher unions are toothless. So teachers get loaded down with many extra tasks and expectations. Endless meetings - yes. Responsibilities to look after club activities throughout the year - yes. Holidays? Short. With the longest holiday falling mid-academic year, students are expected to spend hours doing review and make work homework assignments so their education can continue come September uninterrupted. Having taught here for 30 years in a variety of schools from Junior high to university as well as raising 2 kids, I am still dismayed by the load of pointless work heaped on teachers and students alike. Yet, despite all that many of my university students want to become teachers and my kids have survived and flourished. I have met many great teachers who care deeply about their students. I have nothing but respect for them. The system is very slowly changing for better or worse remains to be seen.

I was an ALT and I would say that a good chunk of your working hours is delegated to pointless tasks such as long-winded meetings and being expected to take on the full workload of an organic teaching staff but none of the benefits. If it was only the strict teaching time, I would say that I only spent a maximum of 3 hours in front of kids and the rest of that is in the staff room

There is basically no time allowance for preparing lessons. This is especially the case in elementary school, where one person has to do everything. As a result, the default position is to use the dry teaching materials published by commercial sources without much care or thought. It allows for no flexibility for differently-abled students, including those with language issues stemming from different family background. The teachers also have to do things like counting money and helping to serve food at lunchtime, which should be delegated to other people. The problem is systemic, full of flaws but ultimately unchangeable. This is not to mention the time used for home-visits, 'research' lessons and sports activities. It's no wonder there are difficulties in recruiting and retaining teachers.

I work 8:30 to 5, 5 days a week as a full-time licensed high school teacher in Japan. I put in about 2 hours overtime a month.

This depends if the teacher has a home room, if the kids in that homeroom are third years (jukensei), and if the teacher is responsible for a high-needs club activity.

If none of the above, i.e., a simple JHS or SHS teacher who teaches class but not much else, then probably not overworked. I don't know what percentage of teachers that would cover, however.

Even after hours teachers are summoned by police for park smoking by students under their care and expected to raise the mistakes of the parents. It’s ridiculous how much they do.

This question should definitely be narrowed down. Public and private schools are very different.

Public school teacher's have it rough. Pretty terrible pay with those lovely long hours into the night

I work 8:30 to 5, 5 days a week as a full-time licensed high school teacher in Japan. I put in about 2 hours overtime a month.

Meetings, club activities, meetings, dealing with parents, meetings, home visits, meetings, lesson planning, meetings, extra-curricular activities, meetings, marking included? Or are you called a "full time" teacher but employed on a fixed contract teaching English? If the latter, I would find you believable.

Sometime I feel that Parents are not doing enough and are relying on schools to raise their kids for them.

I don't think teachers are overworked. They are just spending too much time at school doing unnecessary things to please the vice-principal.

Waaaaaaaay overworked. And what's also sad, there's not even a Teacher's Day in Japan.

If people want to have a family in the future, is best not to become a teacher.

20 years in the high school trenches fore finally moving on and can say unequivocally yes. Much of the overwork though is actual incidental stuff not exactly related to the universal teachers mission, to facilitate learning. Lot of wasted time doing things of little value and meaning.

The classroom stuff is sadly way down on the priority list, way way down. Wanna understand the lost decades, understand J education.

Walking past schools at night and seeing the parking lots full and lights on at 11:30pm makes me say, yeah they are overworked

Meetings, club activities, meetings, dealing with parents, meetings, home visits, meetings, lesson planning, meetings, extra-curricular activities, meetings, marking included? Or are you called a "full time" teacher but employed on a fixed contract teaching English? If the latter, I would find you believable.

I'm a full-time licensed teacher (my teaching license was obtained from Rikkyo University's teachers' licensing program). I'm not "called a full-time teacher". I AM one. I'm in charge of the English club and the ice hockey club. The English club meets twice a week from 3:30 to 5pm. The ice hockey club practices on ice once a week on Saturdays from 3pm to 4:30 pm and train daily from 3:30 to 5pm. All meetings conclude by 5pm (this has been the case for 5 years, since MEXT has updated the overtime laws and began to remotely monitor teachers' hours). I do marking between classes. I have 17 classes a week, so there is plenty of time for marking. I've been teaching for more than 30 years, lesson plans have all been made in advance. I'm a sub-homeroom teacher, so I don't deal with parents. That said, my co-workers who are homeroom teachers leave at 5 as well. Many of the major clubs have coaches from outside the school, now who are either retired teachers or experts in their field, such as in our baseball, kyudo or brass band clubs.

there's not even a Teacher's Day in Japan.

No, but there are 40 paid holidays on top of 15 national holidays.

Yes, of course, there are much more side tasks and bureaucracy than pure teaching hours in a very unhealthy ratio. On the other hand, good teachers know beforehand, that this is a 24/7 job, requiring every personal resources, physical, psychological strength and all your time given to the kids, so that they in principle have to be there for their students during work and also 'leisure' time and even in rare cases of possible familiar problems etc even at night. If you feel you cannot do all this in favor for your students then you have chosen the wrong profession.

Walking past schools at night and seeing the parking lots full and lights on at 11:30pm 

I've lived in Japan since 1988 and have yet to witness this scene...even during the 80s and 90s!

I don’t know if anyone in Japan works too hard. Most people certainly work too long though.

40 paid holidays

From those "40" paid holidays, at least half of that is spent on taking the students to bukatsu competition, having to go to work to take care of bukatsu while in summer "vacation". Weekends? They may still need to take care of dang bukatsu or if the BoE decided to have classes on Saturdays, then the working week becomes a 6 days week and the day off to correct tests, etc. at home.

And while they could make use of their 20 paid vacation days (after 5 years or so), it is a Japanese society stigma to use those days. That last one is on them, tho.

They aren't necessarily overworked. They have just a predator principal who pressured them to stay longer than usual.

That's sort of like asking if the Pope is Catholic. Or if Biden is in cognitive decline.

In other words, an obvious "yes."

I was an ALT and I would say that a good chunk of your working hours is delegated to pointless tasks such as long-winded meetings and being expected to take on the full workload of an organic teaching staff but none of the benefits. If it was only the strict teaching time, I would say that I only spent a maximum of 3 hours in front of kids and the rest of that is in the staff room

I was an ALT for a bit too. But never had to attend a meeting. Finish classes? Go home! Usually around 2:30. 3:30 if it was a long day, lunchtime if it was short. Good times!

But the teachers definitely worked too long.

Do you think school teachers in Japan are overworked?

Is this a trick question of some kind? I'd argue most teachers around the world are overworked, underpaid, and completely unappreciated. It's an utterly thankless job yet necessary for society's continued survival.

Teachers are the same as business people in Japan - too much time wasted on useless tasks that benefit nobody (but we've always done it this way so we can't change, sigh).

English schools in Japan waste too much time! They should be sending their teachers back home after classes than letting them stay in school doing pointless things! the reason why teachers are over worked! Teachers are not just over worked in Japan but also UNDERPAID!

@Geeter

Woah,dude, it's not a competition.

Thanks for your hard work.

From those "40" paid holidays, at least half of that is spent on taking the students to bukatsu competition, having to go to work to take care of bukatsu while in summer "vacation". Weekends? They may still need to take care of dang bukatsu or if the BoE decided to have classes on Saturdays, then the working week becomes a 6 days week and the day off to correct tests, etc. at home.

Our school has Saturday classes as most high schools do. Teachers are allotted two days off a week, Sunday and another day chosen randomly at the beginning of each year. My day was Friday, last year. It's Tuesday this year. Tuesday and Sunday...and 40 paid holidays on top of the two a week and 15 national holidays a year. I take 3 weeks in August, 3 weeks 3 weeks over Christmas and New Years (New Years' holidays don't count against our 40 allotted total) and 10 days at the end of March. So does everyone else, other than those coaches who run major sports teams like baseball...but they get paid for every second of overtime they put in. Everyone is on a digital clock. As for marking, preparing exams etc., full time teachers have around 17 to 20 classes a week...or 3 to 4 classes a day, meaning 2 to 3 spare periods for marking etc.

Woah,dude, it's not a competition.

Just adding some perspective from a full time high school teacher. At least in some schools MEXT guidelines are being strictly adhered to. We're a school of 1500 students. Our teachers work 40 hours a week on average, with about 2 hours overtime a month. Those who run major sports teams work longer...but get paid for their overtime.

IMO, there are some Japanese teachers who are quite good and passionate about what they do. On the other hand, there are Japanese teachers who aren't that good and are not very passionate about teaching from the very start. These teachers (in name only) are not mentally equipped to deal with a roomful of kids and as a result they have mental problems and usually require frequent and lengthy leaves of absence. At least that's the way it looks in my area where my kids went to school. Of course there are also some kids and parents are extremely difficult to deal with, but that's where a passionate teacher holds up better than a teacher who is not very passionate (and not that interested in being a teacher to begin with . . . more like a teacher who has an office worker approach).

Japanese teachers work a hell of a lot of OT at school. They'll be in the teachers' room or somewhere on the school grounds after dark.

American teachers work a hell of a lot of OT at home. We used to take everything home with us and be off the school grounds by 3:30 when school ended at 2:35.

Working long hours does not mean hard work.

Better to employ unemployed job seekers so that they can feed their family rather than the employed staff getting too much overtime/extra shifts.

At my work, two staff does 28 days a month whereas other staff do about 18-20 days a month. Now if the company hired another staff so that everyone can do about 18-20 days, that is much much better.

Junior High School & High school l teachers not only have to teach their classes, they also have to coach the various clubs after school & weekends. Even though many of them no nothing of the sport or whatever it is they're coaching. & they move to different clubs every year or 2. My nephew, a junior high teacher, leaves @ 7am & returns from work past 9pm every day. Also has to go in on weekends as there are clubs to coach.

I think it's the same in many countries. Overworking teachers that is.

Yes. Everyone in Japan is overworked.

Of course the vote is yes as the vast majority here are teachers