Teaching is understood to be a highly stressful profession. In England, workload, high-stakes accountability policies and pupil behaviour are often cited as stressors that contribute to teachers’ decisions to leave posts in the state-funded sector. Many of these teachers leave state teaching to take jobs in private schools, but very little is known about the nature of teachers’ work in the private sector. This research addresses this gap in knowledge and compares the sources of stress experienced by 20 teachers in the state sector to those of 20 teachers in the private sector. The paper is based on qualitative data from a larger study. It analyses data collected in interviews and focus groups with classroom teachers and middle leaders working in mainstream primary and secondary phase education in England. The results emphasise state school teachers’ acute distress in relation to workloads driven by accountability cultures. In comparison, private school teachers report less intense experiences of work-related stress, but some identify demanding parents as a concern. The research’s novelty lies in this comparison between sectors and these sector specific insights may help to focus school leaders’ efforts to improve teaching conditions in both sectors.

教学被认为是一个压力很大的职业。在英格兰，工作量、高风险的问责政策和学生行为经常被认为是促使教师决定离开国家资助部门职位的压力因素。这些教师中的许多人离开国家教师去私立学校工作，但对私营部门教师工作的性质知之甚少。这项研究解决了这一知识差距，并将国有部门 20 名教师与私营部门 20 名教师的压力来源进行了比较。这篇论文是基于一项更大的研究的定性数据。它分析了在英国主流小学和中学阶段教育中工作的课堂教师和中层领导的访谈和焦点小组中收集的数据。结果强调了公立学校教师对问责文化驱动的工作量的严重困扰。相比之下，私立学校教师报告的与工作相关的压力不那么强烈，但有些人认为要求苛刻的父母是一个问题。该研究的新颖之处在于部门之间的这种比较，这些部门特定的见解可能有助于集中学校领导者的努力，以改善两个部门的教学条件。