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

Nothing needs re-structuring or changing except for the phrase "teachers don't get paid for holidays, etc".

That's all, no biggie really, it's just an archaic phrase that needs consigning to 'history' because obviously teachers get holiday pay as part of their 12 monthly payments; the T&Cs surrounding how and when they can take their holidays might be more job specific than some other jobs, but that's all factored into the pay.

Simples.

It has been answered. However now, having your answer, you've decided that you also want to establish whether restructuring teacher contracts would be any better.

Why? This isn't an area you have any particular insight into, or experience of.

You've got a thread of teachers jumping through hoops to try to justify themselves, the usual shitheads going on about final salary pensions and saying teachers claim they work harder than anyone else.

Why should teachers bother talking about restructuring teacher contracts with you? What exactly is in it for us?

Regular doesn't exist in teaching. Every school, every class, every head teacher, every year group, every role are different.

It absolutely has been said to me as a point of complaint. I am trying to establish what that complaint is, why this way of payment exists and whether a more regular way of payment would be better

If you've been told it's been a point of complaint by teachers, why do you need to establish what it is? You've been told.

I am trying to establish what that complaint is, why this way of payment exists and whether a more regular way of payment would be better.

Why?

Yep. It’s also why I think talking about holidays as unpaid and all the extra hours as unpaid is unhelpful. It gives the impression that it’s all totally voluntary and out of the goodness of our hearts. It isn’t a choice, it is contracted and some schools stretch that elastic clause a lot further than others.

The contract basically says teachers get paid e.g 30k if they do all the hours that are actually needed to do the job effectively.

The problem is there's no real benchmark for this as the job never feels 'done'. Some teachers will work themselves to death to feel like they've achieved this, and certain schools will expect this too.

It's a very lazily thought out clause, and is one of the reasons so many teachers burn out because it's not quantifiable. 'any other hours needed to do the job effectively' can have no limit in the eyes of SLT in schools or teachers who feel like they can't feasibly achieve this without killing themselves.

More than me not less i meant to say. Very tired!

I agree. I think those not paying teachers enough use this to make teachers accept less than fait pay. They earn less than me but I think they deserve more. They do work in the holidays and can't just find extra work in the odd week. They deserve more but they also need to realise they are paid for their holidays. Because they're on s full.time contract which demands work outside school and term time.

An easy way of comprehending this is that IF teachers were paid for the holidays (and weekends now I think of it), they could and would be compelled to come into school building and work.

But they aren't so they don't.

HTH.

No teacher has done this. Ever. It's never been point of complaint. They point out a fact. That is all.

As it happens, the OP who is raising this subject.

We don't get allocated annual leave. That's Scotland.

The holidays aren't annual leave, we can't accrue annual leave while on maternity, we can't claim it back if we are ill when we are off and we can't book it when we like.

They are the holidays when kids aren't in school and therefore there is no teaching to be done. So we are off school.

It's not like other jobs.

That’s exactly how we are paid. Our pay covers everything that is part of our contracts. Non-directed time is not unpaid, it is part of the contractual obligations that we are have to fulfil in return for our salary. Holidays are days that we cannot be directed to work. They are like shroedingers holiday, neither work days or annual leave. Once a teacher decides to do work in them as part of the “any other hours” part of their contract to carry out their job effectively then they become paid working hours. Our contract includes them and they are part of the obligations that we agree to in return for our overall salary.

Not saying they don’t deserve it, but the teachers pension scheme is massively overly generous imho. It includes a 23.6% employer contribution for example !

UK average salary is around £30k, so you’d expect a teacher to get at least an average salary, the pension scheme means they do better than that imho.

Some of my sons teachers work way beyond the contracted hours though, just like the many workers in the private sector on salaries that don’t get paid extra for working more than the minimum hours.

Quite frankly I wished teachers and nurses etc. got more than the crappy politicians that just line their own pockets and waste fortunes every day.

Ps, I've never met a teacher who didn't work well over and above their contracted hours in both primary and secondary schools.

OP it's perfectly bloody obvious that teachers are term time workers who get paid for working 39 weeks a year, plus holiday pay. The annual leave days that their holiday pay covers are set out in their conditions of service. Like all other term time workers a proportion of days every year are unpaid however their salary is calculated and paid in equal instalments over the year.

Sorry, it's maybe too late in the evening but I really don't understand what you mean.
Someone on page 2 explained it well with the analogy of being paid in daily increments even though you never work at weekends.

People don't tend to comment on others who work 9-5 "oh wow you get two days holiday every single week". It's unpaid time off. It's the same principle.

@MasterBeth Teachers get paid for so many days or hours of work per year. This is spread over 12 months.

However teachers don't think about it like that. They think about how many actual hours/days they do.

30k for 9 months work is what they get. Reasonable wage for 9 months work right?

30k for 11 months work is probably more the reality as teachers work more hours than contractually stated, so basically teachers are feeling like they need to work more than this and aren't getting paid any more for it. So essentially their hourly rate is lower and they don't get paid much per hour they actually work.

I understand why it's a weird argument. I guess it's hard to explain but it is a case of teachers get paid for their contracted hours, which are usually much more than that, and this often cuts into the holidays. So teachers are working in holidays but not getting paid, basically.

Because it seems to be an anomaly in the world of work

Yes, it is. Teacher contracts are weird and don't fit with the world of work. We're off school in the holidays because the kids aren't in and so there's no teaching to do. Back in the day we were allowed to just get on with it.

I find with teaching that our time is not respected and our workload is piled upon and we're expected to just do more and more as hours paid, directed time etc seems to be a murky area that schools exploit and the government uses to guilt teachers into working all the hours of the day 'for the good of the children'.