TM4T Stress - The Messy Intersection

There are two key elements to stress-in-teaching; they are distinct and separate, but they are also - inevitably - connected. WISE (working in a stressful environment) leads - oops, that should read 'can lead' - to SFS (suffering from stress).

And... as soon as we look at that causation, at that connection, things stop being simple and obvious, they start getting messy and rather nasty. This is largely due to the legal position.

Schools - as employers - have a legal duty to ensure and protect the health and welfare of their employees at work. This applies to mental health just as much as physical health. Stress is a workplace hazard and should be treated as any other health and safety issue.

This seemingly unequivocal duty clearly means that the school - governors and leadership - must take reasonable care: care to ensure that teachers are not put at unreasonable risk of SFS; and care to assess and moderate the level of WISE that teachers are required to tolerate.

This is much easier to discuss in theory than it is to put into practice. The problem lies in the fact that not all SFS is caused or linked to WISE. A teacher's home life can cause Stress too, due to a whole range of emotional, financial and other causes... and pesky ole SFS does not neatly compartmentalise itself into neat categories ('25% bereavement, 40% money worries, and 35% school'). You are either suffering-from-stress or you're not.

Regrettably, if the relationship between school and teacher sours, if the school denies that WISE is the cause of a teacher's SFS, and challenges the capability of the teacher to carry out their job, then the sole topic of discussion tends to be the messy intersection between these two separate and distinct topics.