...to think teachers DO get paid over the holidays?

It came up on Facebook and I didn’t check the date.

ah yes. Because this is the only thread on the whole internet where teachers are crying about how unfortunate they are

If they "constantly whine" it's a bit odd that they haven't posted on this thread since 2023

Why do so many teachers whinge and whine about their jobs? Many people have jobs they don't particularly like, but they just suck it up and get on with it, or quit and get another job.

Why did you resurrect an old thread? You must have searched this out to find it - seems an odd thing to do.

We get 28 days paid holiday.

I don’t know a single other profession that constantly whines about how much harder they work than anyone else and how unfair it is

Presumably more complaining that the way their directed time is directed and expectations of teachers’ responsibilities are regularly expanded, results in an unreasonable quantity of knock-on, but supposedly “undirected” time hours. Undirected is not the same thing as optional. If you have a fixed number of directed time hours, but an unlimited amount of effectively obligatory, but supposedly undirected, time hours, then you are suffering from unreasonable expectations. The marking and prep work all weekend may not be the teacher’s choice of quantity or timing of either activity, but may instead, eg, be due to school policies on homework setting and marking, or new expectations inflicted on them by SLT or the DfE which cannot be done on any day of the year, but do have to be completed during supposedly “undirected” time (so long as that undirected time is now…).

So when you hear teachers complaining about marking and prep work at weekends and during holidays, they are complaining about doing work that they are paid to do?

Opinions, not evidence. This is quite a murky issue evidently, but here’s one point of contact: if teachers’ contracts follow the Burgundy Book, (most do I think), any days of unpaid leave- such as a strike day- result in a 1/365 salary deduction. Evidence, I would say, that we are paid for the entire year, and that 13 weeks are paid holidays. Also, I reiterate that “term time only” and “pro rata” do not feature in teacher’s contracts.
The holidays are just that though- holidays. I feel that teachers are misled to feel that they “should” be working during some of their holidays, when they work damn hard during term time and deserve the rest.

The scary thing about this is that it could be true in an academy. Not an academy I would want to work for though, since it would mean they had abandoned standard teacher pay and conditions.

The key bit is that teacher salaries “accrue at an equal daily rate” for all 365 days of the year. Our pay is not divisible into term time and non term time and annual leave because our contracts include a lot of tasks that are completed outside of directed time and there “is no suggestion that some of these are paid and some are unpaid”.

The other days aren’t paid annual leave. They are days when teachers may or may not be working to fulfil the “any other hours” part of their contract. They aren’t annual leave but they are paid. The press summary explains it quite well. https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2015-0142-press-summary.pdf

If teachers got paid holiday they'd accumulate annual leave during maternity leave so would be able to extend their leave. They can't.

Also if you work out directed time as 1265/32.5 that’s quite a wedge of weeks worked which account for the ‘long holidays’ plus an extra two hours min. each day. In a lot of secondary directed time is timetabled meaning all marking is done outside of this time. Doesn’t take much to then account for the holidays and you end up with the same as any other profession, except we get called names constantly and slagged off every day in the media. If some of the teacher trolls on here are so envious of the holidays, become one. There is a shortage.

Why do you even care? Why does it matter to you? We get paid for the time in school and it’s split over the year, but we do not get paid holidays. Simples. Yet another trash/bash a teacher post on here.

I work in admin / HR in a primary school. Our teachers do get paid over the holidays. Their contracts are 27.5 hours per week all year round (52 weeks per year). The teachers work more hours during the term than 27.5, effectively making up the hours for the rest of the year so that they can have all holidays off

😂😅if you are HR at a school you know this is NOT the case.

@jcyclops that judgement is nothing to do with annual leave / holiday pay of teachers in schools. It was about sixth form teachers who the red book applies to and deductions when on strike. The legal fact remains that teachers who take a full 12 months of maternity accrue only 28 days holiday entitlement (the legal statutory minimum). If the judgement you referred to was applied to annual leave then teachers on maternity and long term sickness would accrue a lot more holiday entitlement and this simply doesn’t happen.

The reality is, teachers have a lot of time to get their work done in their own way and in their own time, and 1,265 hours a year when they have to do their work in the way the headteacher tells them to. Nobody except the teacher themselves knows when the teacher is actually on holiday.

This right here is exactly why the Supreme Court found in favour of the teachers in the Hartley case and established that teachers are paid for holidays (and weekends) and ruled that schools could only deduct salary at 1/365 for a missed day of work. Teacher contracts specify work that has to be done outside of directed days and hours and therefore our salary is not just for our directed days plus statutory leave. We are paid for every day of the year and then decide for ourselves when and where we work outside of directed hours.

(Or whatever the actual directed hours, working weeks ad holidays are…)

Except teachers’ salary is not dressed up as 38 paid working weeks, 5 paid weeks holiday and 9 unpaid weeks, it is dressed up as 38 paid working weeks and 14 weeks paid holiday. That is how the public perceive it. Teachers can’t even effectively argue against it, because it sounds ludicrous to say they have no contractual right to a holiday, to the extent that legislation has to step in and give them the bare minimum, as their contracts are silent on the matter. However, whether or not you are entitled to a paid holiday, and how much paid holiday you are entitled to, is not just semantics, it has legal consequences. The consequences might not be of much concern to you most of the time, but you will certainly develop an interest in them when they affect you.

The reality is, teachers have a lot of time to get their work done in their own way and in their own time, and 1,265 hours a year when they have to do their work in the way the headteacher tells them to. Nobody except the teacher themselves knows when the teacher is actually on holiday.

Yep, that’s the clearest explanation I’ve seen on here and spot on.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the difference between contracted working hours and directed working hours. The judgement in the Hartley case was clear that they are not the same thing.

It would be to our detriment if holidays were really unpaid (like in Scotland where they are only paid for their statutory annual leave entitlement) because unpaid leave would be deducted at a higher rate.

Teachers ‘package’ is dressed up as 38 working weeks and 14 weeks holiday a year

If you are going to try and make a point at least get the numbers correct.

I agree with this, teachers wages are comparable to roles which require qualifications - nurses, social workers, etc. Those professions have loosely similar salary with 4-5 weeks of paid leave a year, depending on experience. Teachers ‘package’ is dressed up as 38 working weeks and 14 weeks holiday a year (5 weeks of that paid) so, realistically it’s irrelevant whether it’s paid holiday or not, as teachers are still paid the equivalent of similar roles (who also do lots of unpaid overtime). Whether they would rather have a higher hourly rate but less contracted hours, or a lower hourly rate but more contracted hours, it works out the same.

Much of this topic was covered in the threads about teachers striking. To quote some points raised then:

[In England and Wales] Teachers ARE paid for holidays - by law.

Full time teachers are at school (directed time) 195 days per year. Adding on the standard 28 days holiday entitlement (required by law) that makes 223 days, but they are paid for 365 days.

A teacher on £38,810 is not paid £199.03/day for 195 days. They are not paid £174.04/day for 223 days. They are paid £106.33/day for 365 days.

This was made crystal clear during the recent strikes. A teacher did not lose 1/195 or 1/223 of their salary for a day on strike, they lost 1/365 of their salary for each strike day - £106.33 in the example above. This rule comes from a long running case that was finally settled in the Supreme Court (Hartley v King Edward VI College - 24/05/2017). All the teaching unions know this and you can find it in their literature and on their websites.

To discharge their directed hours, teachers carry out work in non-directed time. Their contract specifies this - but the amount of time to do this, the location where they do this, or when they do it, is not specified. Teachers should use their professional judgement on when, how long etc.