Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025

Don't buy teacher a Christmas gift unless it is wine, survey suggests

Don't buy teacher a Christmas gift unless it is wine, survey suggests

A homemade card will do for most – but primary teachers wouldn’t say no to booze
Parents in a last-minute panic about Christmas gifts for their children’s teachers don’t need to worry: most teachers say the present they’d prefer is a homemade card – although primary school teachers would be just as happy with booze.

With most schools in England closing for the Christmas holidays on Friday, an anonymous survey of more than 5,000 UK teachers conducted by the Teacher Tapp app revealed teachers would rather receive homemade cards from their pupils than the traditional offerings of wine or chocolate or other gifts.

The exception, though, are teachers in primary schools, who were as likely to say they’d prefer wine as a painstakingly-drawn felt-tip and glitter Santa from Year 1.

The popularity of a student’s own work over the sinful attractions of free alcohol and confectionary shows that teachers really are soft-hearted, even at secondary school, according to Becky Allen, Teacher Tapp’s co-founder and chief analyst.

“Primary school teachers probably get blasé about getting homemade cards, whereas by secondary school it doesn’t happen as much, so it’s a real bonus to have the kids saying something meaningful about you,” said Allen.

For those intent on giving chocolates – favoured by just one in six teachers - Terry’s Chocolate Orange topped the national popularity stakes, while Roses and Quality Street were the least popular.

The relative popularity of Christmas gifts is one of the more unusual results uncovered by Teacher Tapp, an app dedicated to finding out what teachers think and how they do their job on a daily basis.

The results have been eye-opening, according to Allen, an honorary research fellow at Oxford University’s department of education, in revealing the long and often unproductive hours teachers work, and how lonely the job can often be.

“We’ve found that teachers spread their working day over really long hours. Many of them take a break after leaving school, either because they have got caring duties or they are exhausted, frankly,” Allen said.

“They go home and then they start working again in the evening. We found that four in 10 teachers in any weekday evening are sitting in front of the TV doing their marking.

“Psychologically, it can feel quite a burden to do a job where you feel like you are working from first thing in the morning, until the last thing you do before you go to bed is work.

“You’ve got this infinite job, you don’t work as part of a team so you have to make your own decisions how to manage your workload, and that’s really hard for anyone to do.”

Ironically, teachers themselves agree that marking books is often a waste of time – the educational researcher Prof Dylan Wiliam’s calls marking “one of the most expensive PR exercises in history”.

Another survey found more than 70% of teachers agreed that doing away with written comments on pupils’ work would make no impact on what they learned. And nearly two-thirds of classroom teachers said activity such as marking was mainly driven by the need to impress outsiders, whether parents or Ofsted inspectors.

“If you ever say to a headteacher, you could just drop the marking policy, they would be absolutely horrified. But there’s no rule that says you have to have one. But things get culturally embedded and then it’s hard to turn back,” Allen said.

Allen and Laura McInerney, another former teacher and Guardian education columnist, came up with the idea of Teacher Tapp in 2017, attracting seed funding to create the app that now has a dedicated user base of 6,000 teachers around the country answering the three or four brief questions sent each afternoon.

In doing so Teacher Tapp has created a community of teachers who share the same profession but often have little contact with those outside their immediate area, even within their own schools.

One of the saddest results uncovered by Teacher Tapp has been the substantial number of teachers who preferred to eat their lunch – often as short as 30 or 45 minutes a day – in their classrooms or offices, away from their colleagues.

Allen says such responses have led her to think about the loneliness of teaching, “how isolating it is, how little teachers actually know about each other and the job they do.

“Teachers don’t all hang out in the staffroom together as much as they used to, and fewer collegial conversations are taking place. It does mean that quite a lot of the dysfunction in schools comes from relative isolation and lack of understanding.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
China Accuses US of Violating Trade Truce
Panama Port Owner Balances US-China Pressures
France Implements Nationwide Outdoor Smoking Ban to Protect Children
German Chancellor Merz Keeps Putin Guessing on Missile Strategy
Mandelson Criticizes UK's 'Fetish' for Abandoning EU Regulations
British Fishing Boat Owner Fined €30,000 by French Authorities
Dutch government falls as far-right leader Wilders quits coalition
Harvard Urges US to Unfreeze Funds for Public Health Research
Businessman Mauled by Lion at Luxury Namibian Lodge
Researchers Consider New Destinations Beyond the U.S.
53-Year-Old Doctor Claims Biological Age of 23
Trump Struggles to Secure Trade Deals With China and Europe
Russia to Return 6,000 Corpses Under Ukraine Prisoner Swap Deal
Microsoft Lays Off Hundreds More Amid Restructuring
Harvey Weinstein’s Publicist Embraces Notoriety
Macron and Meloni Seek Unity Despite Tensions
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Newark Mayor Sues Over Arrest at Immigration Facility
Center-Left Candidate Projected to Win South Korean Presidency
Trump’s Tariffs Predicted to Stall Global Economic Growth
South Korea’s President-Elect Expected to Take Softer Line on Trump and North Korea
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Ukraine Executes Long-Range Drone Strikes on Russian Airbases
Conservative Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s presidential election
Study Identifies Potential Radicalization Risk Among Over One Million Muslims in Germany
Good news: Annalena Baerbock Elected President of the UN General Assembly
Apple Appeals EU Law Over User Data Sharing Requirements
South Africa: "First Black Bank" Collapses after Being Looted by Owners
Poland will now withdraw from the EU migration pact after pro-Trump nationalist wins Election
"That's Disgusting, Don’t Say It Again": The Trump Joke That Made the President Boil
Trump Cancels NASA Nominee Over Democratic Donations
Paris Saint-Germain's Greatest Triumph Is Football’s Lowest Point
OnlyFans for Sale: From Lockdown Lifeline to Eight-Billion-Dollar Empire
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Hegseth Warns of Potential Chinese Military Action Against Taiwan
OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Output for Third Consecutive Month
Jamie Dimon Warns U.S. Bond Market Faces Pressure from Rising Debt
Turkey Detains Istanbul Officials Amid Anti-Corruption Crackdown
Taylor Swift Gains Ownership of Her First Six Albums
Bangkok Ranked World's Top City for Remote Work in 2025
Satirical Sketch Sparks Political Spouse Feud in South Korea
Indonesia Quarry Collapse Leaves Multiple Dead and Missing
South Korean Election Video Pulled Amid Misogyny Outcry
Asian Economies Shift Away from US Dollar Amid Trade Tensions
Netflix Investigates Allegations of On-Set Mistreatment in K-Drama Production
US Defence Chief Reaffirms Strong Ties with Singapore Amid Regional Tensions
Vietnam Faces Strategic Dilemma Over China's Mekong River Projects
Malaysia's First AI Preacher Sparks Debate on Islamic Principles
White House Press Secretary Criticizes Harvard Funding, Advocates for Vocational Training
France to Implement Nationwide Smoking Ban in Outdoor Spaces Frequented by Children
×