BBC News Online profiles the typical working day of Liza Stapleton, a teacher at Kingsmead Primary School in Hackney, east London.

0820 - Walks into classroom and begins preparation
0845 - Photocopying and setting up before lessons start

Sometimes she feels more like a secretary than a teacher

0900 - Class come in, begins teaching
1030 - Children in assembly - gets coffee and works in classroom
1045 - Break - paperwork in classroom
1100 - Resumes teaching
1245 - Lunchtime - marks while eating sandwich
1345 - Back in the classroom
1530 - Children go home
1545 - Puts up classroom display

A working lunch

1615 - Staff meeting
1635 - Word processing, liasing with cleaner, sorting out papers
1700 - Leaves for home
1800 - Resumes work at home
1900 - Finishes for the day.

Tests ahead

Liza's pupils are currently preparing for their national curriculum tests next week and everyone is feeling the pressure, she says.

While Liza thoroughly enjoys her job, she says too much of it does not involve working with the children.

"When I did teacher training I really thought the majority of my day would be spent teaching," she said.

"If I were to calculate how many hours I do a week, the minimum hours are spent standing in front of a class teaching and the rest of it is spent form filling and in bureaucratic paperwork.

"I quite often think that my job is very secretarial rather than teaching and I think that's why a lot of people leave."