EI launches new teachers’ work-related stress project in Europe
EI’s newly formed European Region, ETUCE, is launching a survey amongst teachers to map the harmful effects of stress.
The ETUCE successfully bid for a grant from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion, to deliver WRSIII– a teachers’ work-related stress survey –across the region to assess, compare and evaluate the impact of psycho-social hazards on professionals in their workplace.
Occupational health and safety amongst teachers and school staff is a key concern for ETUCE members because work-related stress remains one of the biggest health and safety threats to teachers. The significant impact of the problem demands particular attention from education trade unionists.
With the new WRSIII project, ETUCE will build on the work it previously carried out, in two former projects on work-related stress amongst teachers and school staff. Whereas those projects sought to establish and implement the ETUCE Action Plan on Work-Related Stress, the new project will conduct a survey among teachers in Europe to collect detailed and concrete facts on teachers' work related stress at grassroots level.
Helping unions implement plans
The results of the survey will enable ETUCE to identify ways in which it can continue to support national teacher unions to implement the ETUCE Action Plan and the European Framework Agreement on Work-Related Stress.
The Forschungsstelle Arbeits und Sozialmedizin, a German research centre specialising in occupational and social medicine, has been given the task of conducting the survey and will gather data on the basis of the Copenhagen Psycho-social Questionnaire.
Schools participate in survey
ETUCE invites all European member organisations to support it in identifying 500 schools from the primary, secondary, vocational education and training sectors, and their respective teachers to participate in an online survey.
An advisory group, consisting of the ETUCE secretariat and experts from four teachers’ unions, as well as a member of the European Federation of Education Employers, will guide the project’s implementation and will meet at regular intervals throughout the course of the project. All members of the advisory group have already proven their expertise and commitment to the work of ETUCE in previous projects.
For more information please visit the ETUCE Teachers' Occupational Safety and Health website: www.ei-ie.org/go/9
By Cecilia Logo, Education International
