A teacher's time is not free

The argument in one sentence

This is an opinion piece, and its argument fits in one sentence: every hour a teacher spends after class writing something a tool could draft is an hour with a price, and the teacher pays it out of their evenings and weekends. So it is not enough to ask of any tool for teachers whether it is free. The question that matters is how many hours it gives back, and where those hours go.

Where this view comes from

It comes from a story String's founder tells on the About page, quoted here as written:

On the same page he says he understood it after a year designing the STEM program for one of the largest school groups in Saudi Arabia. He went looking for what had driven the results and found instead where the time had gone: most of the effort from the teachers and the management team “had been spent on solving software problems and administration. Not on teaching. On making the tools work.” Then he writes the sentence this post takes its title from:

What the numbers say, and where they come from

The figures below come from the United States and England, and they should not be read as figures for schools in the Arab world. The first two surveys measure working hours, and they point the same way: contracted hours do not hold what is asked of a teacher. The third measures which tasks make classroom staff feel they matter.

In the Pew survey, 81% of teachers who say there is not enough time name simply having too much work as a major reason. In England's Teacher Workload Survey 2019, primary teachers and middle leaders reported an average of 12.5 hours during weekends, evenings or other out-of-school hours, and their secondary colleagues 13.1. Seventy per cent of the primary group and 76% of the secondary group strongly disagreed with the statement “I can complete my assigned workload during my contracted hours”. Most said they still spent too much time on marking, data management and general administrative work, and primary staff added planning to that list.

In the same Gallup survey, 59% of those surveyed say they used AI tools during the 2025-2026 school year. Nearly two-thirds of those users say it gave them more time for the parts of teaching that matter most: 13% “a lot more time” and 51% “somewhat more time”. Earlier, on July 8, 2025, The 74 reported a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey of 2,232 U.S. public school teachers in which weekly AI users saved almost six hours of work per week.

Why we say it is not free

When people say marking and planning are “part of the job”, they are right. But look at who pays for that part when contracted hours cannot hold it:

• The teacher pays with their evenings. That is what England's figures on evening and weekend hours say, and what 84% of U.S. teachers say about their regular work hours.
• They pay with the part of the job that gives it meaning. In the Gallup survey, the activities most likely to make educators feel they matter involve working directly with students: 85% say helping a student through something difficult makes them feel they matter a great deal. An hour spent on an admin form is an hour not spent with a student.
• The school pays when it picks a tool without asking about time. A tool whose cost in teacher time is never measured against what it gives back can add work instead of removing it. England's survey has a close example, as the next section shows: changes schools made to reduce workload, which notable minorities of respondents said had added to it.

That is why we say a teacher's time is not free. Whoever designs a tool for teachers, or chooses one for them, should count the hours before counting the features.

The strongest case against this view

The strongest objection is not that teachers do not get tired. It is this: planning and marking are not just paperwork, they are the thinking itself. A teacher who writes their own test questions is thinking about their students while they write, and a teacher handed a ready-made draft may lose that thinking, then spend as long reviewing and correcting it as writing it would have taken.

The objection has numbers behind it. In Gallup's 2026 survey, 7% of AI users say it cost them time rather than saving it, and 29% say it had no effect either way. The 74 reported in July 2025 that 28% of U.S. teachers still oppose AI tools in the classroom. And in England, most respondents said their schools had changed their approaches to data tracking, behaviour, marking and feedback, and teacher appraisal specifically to reduce workload, yet in most cases only a minority, typically around 20% or less, felt the changes had reduced their workload, and notable minorities said the changes had added to it.

Our answer is that the objection is half right. The mistake is handing the tool the decision. The fix is handing it what needs no decision: formatting the sheet, a second version at an easier level, many questions of one type, the first draft of a letter the teacher then rewrites. The goal, the last question of the lesson, the judgement on a student's work and the sentence that reaches a parent stay with the teacher. Preparing lessons with AI sets out what to hand over and what to check.

What would change this view? A teacher who logs a week and finds that reviewing what the tool wrote takes as long as writing it, or longer. Then the tool gives nothing back and should be dropped. So we are not asking you to believe this argument. We are asking you to measure it.

What to do on the first day of your week

1. 1

   List this week's paperwork

   Everything you write outside lessons: plans, worksheets, tests, marking, messages, reports.

2. 2

   Time each task while you do it

   Write the start and end time at the task itself, not at the end of the week; memory rounds. One week's time log has a ready table for it.

3. 3

   Pick the task that repeats most

   It may be the worksheet, the short quiz or the weekly plan: something you write every week in the same shape.

4. 4

   Ask a tool for the draft, and time the review

   Write the request with your class and lesson in it, review and edit the draft, and note how long that took. Compare it with your usual time.

5. 5

   Decide in advance where the saved hour goes

   Write it down before you start: a student you will follow up, a question you will prepare for tomorrow, an evening you will not work. If the tool saves nothing after two or three weeks, drop it.

String Studio is one of these tools: you write a request and get a draft plan, worksheet or test, which you review and edit before printing it or sharing it with your students as a link.

Written with String's editorial team: we use AI for research and first drafts, and a person checks every fact and every source before anything is published. How we write