To think that the difference between Leave entitlements for teachers in the UK and Ireland is crazy

I'm a primary teacher in Ireland and our conditions are excellent . All the leave outlined in the OP is available and up to 10 days unpaid leave also if you need it .
My principal is also hugely understanding if you need time for anything family related .
Finish at 2.20 pm and rarely have to work later once September planning is done . And as I am older with a Master's degree and a minor promoted post I will be earning over 90k euro by the end of the next round of increases .
I thank my lucky stars every day and am so shocked at how teaching is in th UK.
As someone said upthread though, a lot depends on your school but I don't think many, if any, primary teachers work the hours that UK teachers do.

I think it depends on the Head. My SIL is a teacher and she can take days off for funerals and weddings of close family members. Her school also gives every teacher a free day off every half term in recognition of the work they do in the evenings and weekends.

And my niece is also a teacher and her school and ahead are also very good with being supportive. I think like a lot of MN you only get to hear when people are dissatisfied with relationships or jobs etc - so that's why MN has a skewed view of some things.

While the working conditions in Ireland might be more favourable for the teachers, the short school days and longer summer holidays are a very difficult for working parents. Primary school kids finish at around 1pm in the early years a bit later for the older kids. It means parents have two school pick ups to do if more than one child. Part time work is impossible to manage on these short days meaning parents pay for after school care right the way through primary. Oh and then they break up for summer mid to late June for primary and end of May for secondary. Parents in the UK have a meltdown about childcare and entertainment for 6 weeks of school holidays, just imagine 3 months.

I don’t know anyone who has missed a wedding or funeral either. I’m currently not supposed to take holiday in term time but if I can work it out around deadlines I can get a few days.

I’m baffled why so many people think teachers should be able to get time off during term time. It’s not exactly a surprise aspect of the job that 100% attendance during term time is expected. I work in the holiday industry - we can’t get peak holiday times off. I know this. I don’t rant about how unfair it is that I have to work Christmas, or bank holidays, or half term. It is a known part of the job. I would expect the same goes for the teaching profession.

Time off for sick leave, dependency leave, medical appointments, funerals, etc, should be outside of normal leave criteria. These are things the employee has no control over the timing of. But weddings? They are a nice-to-have. If a close relative has put a wedding on midweek it is not just teachers who would struggle to get that day off.

We can't get paid but can take the time.

Meh, I think a Friday wedding is a perfectly normal thing. I also think that when you're organising a wedding, there's a lot of factors to consider before remembering that one of you has an aunty who's a teacher. I also think it's very normal to want to attend a niece's or nephew's wedding.

I don't see why teachers are expected to miss out on normal family events in the way almost no other profession is. It's not the way it works in other countries, so surely it should be possible to change it in the UK. (Again, I think just GB as I don't think teaching in NI is like that. Not sure about Scotland and Wales?)

Tbf, my school is brilliant. Not perfect 😉 but brilliant in many ways.

A day off for a wedding (as in the other thread) would be honoured and we can take time off during term time if we need to for our own children's events. And we get TOIL for overnight stays. There are also opportunities for us to 'earn' extra days off by volunteering for certain events.

Days off are unpaid, of course, but they are permitted within reason.

I know of a few schools that are similar but I've also worked in others that were very rigid and inflexible.

@CelesteCunningham and I get accused of lying all the time but I’ve worked in a number of schools that pay teacher for additional work or overtime like intervention etc.

Had that at my school and it is an indie. Reason given was that she would miss 4 year 10 lessons and that the parents are paying for qualified subject teachers. Governors got involved and HT backed down.

Funerals are obviously different, but I actually think that if the couple getting married have close family who are teachers they should take that into consideration when planning their wedding. It’s quite selfish to assume / expect people to take annual leave for a wedding regardless of their job.

From experience the culture/environment really depends on the leadership.

That's genuinely good to hear.

There’s clearly huge variation though as the MNs teaching world is not one I’ve seen or my friends & family have seen working in schools.

it depends where you work, I have teacher friends and family. They get 3 days personal leave for whatever and can take time of in lieu for sports days etc. Sickness and bereavement will be covered by doctors notes if needed and I 6 months full pay sick leave is not unusual in the public sector.

That’s a bitchy comment so here’s mine for you to consider: it’s people like you who deserve to have your children and grandchildren taught in classes of eighty or in parentally-supervised home learning sessions via Teams. Poor conditions lead to fewer teachers. The holidays aren’t the draw you think, so something is going wrong.

And at the same time can they have the same protections that other workers get?
You know those that when assaulted at work the perpetrator is removed permanently form the premises?

I can see that you would love for teachers to be able to take any time that they want off for holidays, maybe the for weeks before the year 11 exams?
Do you also want teachers to be able to pick and choose the materials that they work with so that they only ever get good results?
Or to clock in and out at the end of each day?
all work out of normal hours to be overtime?

There are more but I am sure that you would need to wind your neck in before you can see them.

No I just hate the bitching they do about never having a day off term time or having to pay school holiday prices for their trips!

Their total leave in a year is impressive!
And it can’t exactly come as a surprise to teachers when they train that they can’t have term time holidays - it’s a good reason why I’m not a teacher

Given that 40,000 teachers quit teaching last year, you'd think that anyone who has school-age children or grandchildren (or just cares about the education of the country's children) would actually like the idea of things being done to help keep qualified teachers in the profession and avoid the current situation where many schools cannot put a qualified teacher in front of every class. But no, apparently not.

Some TAs remain without 1:1 but tend to be shared between classes. Budgets now mean most schools can’t afford a TA unless high needs funding is in place. The only full time TA at my school is in Reception, purely because of age and ratios.

It's OK. We do only get standard holiays paid leave it's just that these also coincide with school holidays.

The rest of the school holidays are holidays for the children. We don't get paid for them (we get paid during them because our annual pay is spread out over 12 months for convrnience). It might make you feel better to learn that, despite not being paid for them, we are still required to work during them.

And, as always, if you have a degree, the professionalism, the interpersonal and organisational skills, the patience, the empathy and the commitment etc you can always become a teacher. There is a recruitment crisis as I'm sure yours aware.

If half the people who moan teachers have it so easy retrained, the crisis would be over.

But they don't because, mostly, they're just twats who couldn't hack it.

@Positivenancy thank you. What makes it worse is because he was on jury service he had to wait for permission to be released from it and as a result we missed saying goodbye to her. He didn't make it in time before she died.

Do you think it's right that teachers miss family weddings and funerals? Because I think it's ridiculous.