EAST Lancashire teachers are calling for a happier new year in schools which have been hit hard by staff shortages in 2001.

And they have demanded an end to the 55-hour working week in a bid to make the profession more attractive and avert another crisis next year..

Simon Jones, divisional secretary of the Blackburn with Darwen branch of the National Union of Teachers said: "Teachers need protection from the existing excessive demands which spill heavily over into their own time and lead to teachers working well in excess of 50 hours a week."

But he admitted that an inflexible and definitive limit on the working week was a difficult concept for teachers to adopt. "To a degree, teachers need some self-protection," he added.

He suggested that an upper limit on class contact time and the addition of administrative support for teachers would ease the burdens they currently faced. "We must have constraints on headteachers and managers who allocate work without adequate consideration of the cumulative workload.

"It would serve to make teaching more attractive and help overcome the exhaustion many teachers feel."

The NUT is telling the Government that for every two hours of teaching, teachers should be allocated one hour marking and preparation time, based on a maximum 22 hours of teaching.

A further six hours marking and preparation in teachers' own time would give a total working week of 38 hours. If a teacher regularly worked in excess of these hours, their duties should be re-examined, Mr Jones added.

"At a family time of year we must end the non-family friendly demands put on teachers," he said.