The results displayed in Table 5.3.1 show the average daily time-allocation by primary school
teachers. The results show that, on average, teachers spend between 8.29 and 8.83 hours on
Mondays through Thursdays. The mean daily time allocation by teachers on Fridays is
generally lower than that on other days. The mean allocation of time on Fridays is around
6.31 hours with a confidence interval of between 5.60 through 7.03. This confidence interval
does not overlap significantly with any other confidence intervals for teaching days Mondays
through Thursdays. This suggests that any differences in the time allocation are likely to be
statistically significant at the 5 percent level. The average time-allocation over the period
Monday to Friday is 40.84 hours with a lower 95 percent confidence limit of 38.79 and an
upper 95 percent confidence limit of 42.89. The average allocation of time by teachers over
the entire week is 43.97 hours, with a lower 95 percent confidence limit of 41.65 hours and
an upper 95 percent confidence limit of 46.29 hours. This result is over the 40-hour week that
is generally considered in most studies on labour supply and time allocation. This value will
be of significance in subsequent analyses when constructing an indicator of being overloaded.
International and national evidence on teachers’ work points to teachers spending over 50
Table 5.3.1: Primary teachers' daily time allocation in hours and percentage over a typical week
Time Budgets Time Shares
Period of Week Mean L95% U95% Mean L95% U95%
Monday dmo 8.83 8.25 9.40 dmo_s 20.20 19.03 21.37 Tuesday dtu 8.79 8.32 9.26 dtu_s 20.54 19.35 21.72 Wednesday dwe 8.62 8.14 9.11 dwe_s 19.84 18.88 20.79 Thursday dth 8.29 7.71 8.87 dth_s 18.73 17.59 19.88 Friday dfr 6.31 5.60 7.03 dfr_s 13.99 12.28 15.69 Monday-Friday dmf 40.84 38.79 42.89 dmf_s 93.29 92.10 94.49 Saturday dsa 1.34 0.89 1.79 dsa_s 2.86 1.87 3.85 Sunday dsu 1.79 1.45 2.13 dsu_s 3.85 3.18 4.51 Monday- Sunday dms 43.97 41.65 46.29 Saturday- Sunday dss 3.13 2.54 3.72 dss_s 7.12 5.51 7.90 mybreak UBT 1.84 1.64 2.04
It is important to provide a summary of the cumulative amount of break time (mybreak) that
teachers believe they may have enjoyed. The mean of ‘mybreak’ is 1.84 hours per week. The general picture shown by these results is that teachers spent a sizeable amount of time on
week days (dmf), allocate over 8 hours in most days and rarely enjoy any significant break
during a typical week.
Time spent on Saturdays (dsa) is the lowest allocation over the typical week. The allocation
of time for Sunday (dsu) is marginally higher than that for Saturday (dsa). Overall, it is clear
that a significant proportion of weekend hours (dss) are spent on school tasks. The mean time
expended is 3.13 hours with a 95 percent confidence interval of 2.54 to 3.72 hours.
The 95 percent confidence interval provided for the Monday (dmo), Tuesday (dtu), and
Wednesday (dwe) time budgets do not show significant variation at the 5 percent level. The
simple test to verify this claim is to check whether the confidence intervals overlap. This rule
of thumb sufficies and is therefore used reliably without need for extensive formal tests of
significance. These extensive formal tests of significant difference and STATA 9.2 code and
output are available, if required. Appendix H shows an example. The confidence intervals for
the weekend times (Saturday (dsa) and Sunday (dsu)) also overlap slightly, suggesting that
differences in teachers’ time allocation across weekend days may be statistically significant at
levels of significance slightly greater than 5 percent. So in general, there is very little
difference in time allocations for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There is a difference in
time allocations for Thursday and Friday. Weekend time budgets also are different.
The results reported in Table 5.3.1 focused on time allocation behaviour in terms of both time
budgets and time shares. The results of shares of daily time allocations indicate that just over
20 percent of the time is allocated to Mondays (dmo_s) and Tuesdays (dtu_s). The time
shares allocations for Mondays and Tuesdays are 20.20 percent and 20.54 percent,
respectively. The time share allocations for Wednesday (dwe_s) and Thursday (dth_s) are
19.84 percent and 18.73 percent, respectively. Consistent with the findings from time
budgets, the allocation on Fridays (dfr_s) is lowest, around 14 percent. The allocation for
Monday to Friday (dmf_s) is 93.29 percent, on average, with a 95 percent confidence interval
as stated. The balance, of 7.12 percent is the time share of Saturday-Sunday (dss_s).
The results highlight the relatively larger share (over 7 percent) of time allocated over the
weekend. Notable in these results is that time allocation to Saturdays (2.86 percent) is lower
than the time share for Sundays (3.85 percent). On the basis of using a simple overlap test for
confidence intervals, it is clear that there are some significant differences in the way teachers
allocate their time shares over a typical week. The results reported for time shares are similar
In general, using time shares highlights that the differences in daily shares that are larger than
those shown by using actual hours expended. This is a very significant result in that it shows
that the teachers’ time-squeeze is more pronounced when reported in terms of time shares than time budgets. This is a significant contribution of the thesis for two reasons, among
many. First, the problem of the equivalence of time budgets and time shares has not been
researched in the primary literature. Second, the primary literature does not provide a ‘prima facie’ case to argue that time budgets and time shares are equivalent in effort allocation.