To ask teachers if you just accept the inflated holiday prices?

Food for thought @CurlyhairedAssassin

I have to say I've never found it that bad but like I said mine are still school aged.

I have lots of teachers friends always off in the holidays which helps.

I have never not been allowed to go to a funeral, so I think a lot depends on the school in question.

Exactly @dollybird It's not a race to the bottom. Everyone has it equally bad.

My youngest is just about to go to uni. Eldest is already there. I’m school admin term time only so very low paid. This didn’t matter hugely when they were young as the advantages of being off in the school holidays with them balanced out all the (many, actually) disadvantages. We never could afford to go abroad so just went self catering for many years, often with family to make it seem less like “same shit, different place”!

Gradually it has become a huge general ball ache having my kind of job. Started with them not wanting to hang out with me much during the holidays by about 14. I don’t know many others who are term time only so rarely was off at the same time as others so it got quite boring.

As they’ve become older teenagers the holiday restrictions have got REALLY annoying. It’s not just the inflated prices. It’s the choice about WHEN you are off. You can’t even do weekends away with your other half easily, or some weddings, as no chance of a half day on Friday or Monday. It’s quite restricting. I’ve done the 6.30pm flight and late night return on a Sunday (or Monday if BH) and it’s fucking rushed and tiring once you get to a certain age . If you go by car somewhere you can’t get very far in a couple of hours. or you end up getting there well after everyone else in your group has arrived and you feel you’ve missed out . For my mum’s big birthday family weekend I was the last to arrive and first to leave, just because I don’t have an annual leave allowance.

With 2 young adults at uni whose start and ends of term don’t align with mine it’s annoying if you want to pay them a visit during their term time.

it’s other things as well, can’t take any time off to go to a funeral (without a load of hassle), take a parent or other relative to a health appointment, go for a job interview without your manager knowing, sit in the house for a tradesman etc.

But yes, the school holiday price difference is now much worse than it’s ever been. much worse. (Thankyou, dynamic pricing). And when you do go away everywhere is chocka and full of kids, which you no longer want, but neither are you ready for a Saga holiday 😆

for anyone working in a school for childcare reasons (especially if in a low paid role) my advice would be to get out before you get to this stage! As it stands now I’m hoping to retire early in a few years (thanks to an inheritance, no thanks to my extremely crap local government pension!) and I relish the thought of affordable holidays at the dates of my choosing, when it’s much less crowded.

You could go longvweekend then depending on your days?
UPS3 is good salary though am sure you can afford school holiday prices.

But teachers with kids are just as likely to be paying for uni too?

I thought that parental leave was for emergencies, like your child being in hospital, their school is closed and you can’t get child care, child being ill, not just fancying a cheaper holiday.

I'm hopefully switching to training to be an accountant. I worked in this area before teaching (many years ago) and have now restarted exams, hoping that I'll be able to land an entry level job somewhere and work from there! I left accounting as a youngster as I wanted something more active, but after 10 years in teaching, I'll happily settle for working at a computer all day if it means I have more flexibility in all other areas of life.

you can look for teaching jobs in the areas of the country (East Mids, Kent etc.) that have different school breaks. My DC go back the week of the BH, and finish 2nd week of July, so we can usually get our main family holiday a bit cheaper if we go straight away as school finishes. You can sometimes get the October half term mis-aligned too, which saves some money but means there's not much open.

I think disrupting learning IS sufficient reasoning though.

The school will quickly be able to calculate how many hours of learning periods will be lost to how many students, which of those are exam classes, extra duties/clubs etc would be disrupted and the cover costs. In fact the cover costs alone would be justification enough in the current funding crisis.

I think it's very different from parental leave as that can be covered by a fixed term contract or some sort of mid term arrangement within a department- not the same at all as covering for random weeks holidays here and there.

I've always just viewed it as a payoff for getting more holidays and getting the holidays off with my kids.

Yeah there’s nothing I can do about it so I obviously just get on with it. It’s a downside to the holidays but we get a lot of holiday so it’s worth it. Also I don’t ever find flights are madly expensive but maybe that’s the places I go - we always fly easyJet and we did two weeks in Italy this summer which was lovely, just had to obviously save and plan in advance. We’ll go away somewhere else in October but flights are currently £30 if you wiggle the timings right so it’s ok. I’ve also literally never known any different as I worked in schools straight out of uni!

Scottish school go back in third not second week never before the 14th not in past 25 years. This year teachers were back in 12-13th kids back Wednesday 14th. They generally break up on last day of June and are off for July and first two weeks of August generally any flight after 20th August in Scotland will be cheaper

What does this mean? I'm not sure I understand the post...are you implying school support staff don't go on holidays? Because I'm pretty sure I just got home from one...have another booked at half term, and another at Christmas!

It's simple economics, in the same way that flowers rocket in price around Mother's Day etc., market forces.

Oh, I remember 'factory fortnight', aka Wakes Weeks, the whole town became a ghost town in the 50s and 60s, the first Saturday saw hundreds of coaches lined up to take families off to the seaside! We used to get last week in June, first in July which was often Wimbledon and I would be annoyed to miss watching it on TV.

That wasn't the point I was making. What I was responding to was being told with a pre-schooler I can take cheap holidays out of term time. But I was saying I can't because I am paying £77 per day childcare which wipes out any holiday budget. So I haven't been able to take advantage of cheaper holidays. Now childcare stops and we have that extra cash back, we're stuck with holidays in the school holidays.

@fundbund it’s a legal right all parents are entitled to though. Understandably, schools aren’t going to want to be advertising it or encouraging it because it will be disruptive if everyone did it. However, not everyone can afford a week of unpaid leave so everyone won’t be doing it anyway.

https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/advice/conditions-of-service/maternity/parental-leave-england.html

But our understanding has been that the request can’t be declined without sufficient reasoning so not just ‘it’s disruptive’, and they could suggest alternative dates which they need to do in a specific timeframe of you making the request.

I get that it might be easier and more flexible in a primary school though.

I don’t really think it’s any different to a teacher taking paternity leave in the middle of term.

@RosiePH secondary schools would literally descend into chaos if they allowed this.

There are 100 teaching staff at my school. There are 39 weeks. If we had say 2-3 members of staff off each week on unpaid leave, as well as regular absence due to illness, and trips, the cover costs would soar. Budgets are already shot to pieces.
It costs enough in cover to manage ordinary staff absence and residential trips to the extent that we have had to stop running DOfE as we just could not justify the disruption and the cover.

Well it’s a legal right all parents have so I don’t see why schools can discriminate and say their employees who are parents can’t do this.

Honestly, my DH spends his life basically raising other people’s children because so many parents are unfit and unable of doing a decent job. Anyone begrudging him a week of unpaid leave which he is legally entitled to needs to spend a week in his shoes. And he more than picks up the slack for other colleagues.

He teaches primary so no exams to consider. He may well feel differently about it if he was teaching Yr10-13 of course.

We aim for places or accommodation that doesn't attract families although I appreciate that advice isn't helpful if you do have children.

You couldn’t be more wrong. Teachers get pretty much the same as most people, around 5 weeks paid, and the rest of the time off is UNPAID, but their salary is equally divided over 12 months.

I can’t believe that people still believe teachers have all the time off paid. I’m neither a teacher nor related to one, but have known this for years

We’ve always flown by Ryanair or whoever was cheapest to the cheapest destination that’s warm enough. Then we get hotels and or Airbnb’s. This way, we’re not particularly conscious of school holiday inflation.

Yeah my school is pretty generous when it comes to to things like leave of absence for nativities etc but no way would they allow a week for a holiday!

I can't see many schools allowing that either. They'd have to pay for cover for the classes. Other colleagues, having to pick up the slack, would be livid. Parents, justifiably, would be annoyed.