Nine Teachers out of Ten are Under Stress

A research shows that nine teachers out of ten are under stress and it affects their work negatively.


The Korean Teachers & Educational Worker’s Union conducted a survey of 2,222 school teachers on the reason and the actual condition of their stress. According to this survey, 90.8% of the respondents are burdened with too much stress and 78.8% of teachers are badly affected to their jobs because of it. The problem is that only 56.6% of them have made efforts to handle themselves under pressure. That is, most of teachers are suffering from stress which has a direct influence on work, but only few of them seek to get rid of stress.


More importantly, 71.9% of those polled replied that they have gone through physical discomforts due to the high-levels of stress. These physical symptoms were found a lot more common among teachers who work in the big cities (73.4%), have big classes (78.7%) and have less years of experience in teaching (73.9%).
Symptoms generally include extreme fatigue, body aches, and headaches, but only 16.1% of teachers sought professional medical help.

With questionnaire asking the cause of their stress, a large number of teachers answered that it was because of the mistaken education policies (41.14%) and some other reasons were their massive works (18.1%) and the conflict with directors (15.3%). In addition, they also replied that the possible solutions to cope with stress were democratic administration of schools (36.4%), assurance of time for research and recess such as sabbatical years (16.48%), and reduction for the routine work (16.22%).