Leaving teaching and getting past the holidays? How do you do with 30 days off? Is it better now?

Not in my experience. If they want you out they simply bully you out

This was aimed as a reply 🤦🏻‍♀️

Teachers pensions are still much better than most else out there.

Or ‘other’ people should be made to do a year teaching before they complain about teachers

I left teaching last year and haven’t looked back. In my experience the grass is definitely greener, even without the long holidays

How is that helpful?

I think my last school was run by someone who believed in perpetual revolution. Everything had to be redone every year. There was always something new. No recycling of plans because we were constantly in a new year zero. Everything that went before was letting the kids down and we needed to do it in the new way.

And as about 1/3 of the teachers left every year, there was always lots of new meat who would fall in with it through fear and inexperience.

I get 32.5 days leave plus bank hols and the option to buy a week. Also do compressed hours so get every other Friday off which is another 25 days off a year without loosing any pay. I homework most of the time, only going into the office occasionally for team days or supplier meetings. I work for the civil service so pay not has high as private sector but the other perks make up for it.

Yep. After 25 years in teaching, dh quit as deputy head and moved to a fairly high level admin job in a university. He took a significant pay cut to do it, but it saved his sanity and possibly his health. It's an absolute piece of cake compared with teaching, and he gets a pretty decent holiday allowance because in addition to the statutory holiday allowance the uni is closed for more days around public holidays.

Pensions have changed a lot in recent years. They used to pay out at 60, and could be taken from 55. New teachers will be waiting till 67/68 for theirs.
Mat leave doesn't compare well to civil service ML that I've heard about.

If all the teachers who are counting the days until the next half-term or whose hearts are not 100% in it quit teaching, there would be virtually none left. It always astonishes me when people blithely tell teachers they should quit for that reason. The recruitment and retention crisis is dire enough already without encouraging the departure of the thousands and thousands who are no doubt hanging in there by a thread.

Having a competent teacher who's not loving it is a lot better than not having a qualified teacher at all!

I’m not a teacher but work in a term time only nursery…so don’t even have the OK pay. I’m fed up and want to do something else but no idea what.

Pension is not gold plated at all. Pay progression is not set nor portable. Holidays (unpaid leave) is good but working when unpaid isn't a benefit.

@ClassicStripe it is not 'dire'. Teachers get 18 weeks of occupational maternity before they drop down to SMP for 21 weeks. That is incredibly generous. Most people get the statutory minimum which is 90% of their average weekly earnings for the first six weeks, and then SMP of £184.03 per week for the the next 33 weeks.

Maternity pay is dire for teachers. Plus you can’t tack annual leave on the end so you lose out there as well and when it’s summer hols etc those six weeks count against your leave even though you would have been off anyway.

If there is a university near you, you could try to get a job in administration there. The pay won't be brilliant, but my place gives everyone 34 days (including bank holidays and mandatory closure days, which tend to be round Easter and Xmas), and 41 days for people on higher grades. The only issue would be that if you worked in anything around admissions, you wouldn't be able to take late August off.

30 days tends to be earned with seniority (so DH has 30days, after 20 years with the company and being a director/board member). No option to buy holiday and often struggles to take the 30 days because it has to fit around quarter ends/year ends and other team members holidays. I believe it is pretty rare for anyone to have much more than 20+BH as a new/junior employee these days?

I work in a school (full time, all year round) and I get 20 days plus 8 bank holidays. I wouldn't have moved from term time only if my husband didn't work from home as we still need some adult supervision in the holidays.

I got a term time job originally because I was fed up of the stress of booking school holiday annual leave (which everyone wanted) and if you don't get it, the stress of finding a holiday club with hours long enough to fit around work, or DH and I would request to juggle our hours so one drops off and one picks up.

If you don't like teaching but want term time only, then there are lots of non-teaching roles especially in secondary schools. Might not quite have the same level of pay and some do require additional qualifications, but areas like Pastoral, careers, SEND all have student contact.

I work for a large private company. We get 30 days plus bank holidays, plus option to buy a week. I have a holiday approx every 8- 10 weeks. 1x 2 week hol & rest 1 week with a couple days to spare. Plus we have option of compressed. So I do a 70 HR fortnight. & Buy a week's hol. 39 hrs one week 31 the next so a nice day off every other week. It's loads of hols.

My maternity pay as a teacher has been less than most other professionals I know. A lot of places now give 6 months full pay. So the argument about maternity is rubbish. You also can't tack holiday on to mat leave as a teacher (but you can use SPL to get paid in the holidays).

I don't recognise working holidays as a teacher, I just don't do it.

Former teacher here. I have a much better work life balance now with normal holiday allowance (I have 25+bank hols+can buy a week). In my experience working part-time just means you do normal job full-time hours but for much less pay. It's a novelty to be able to choose when you have holiday as well. Birthdays off!

When I retuned to FT employment when my children were around 10 to 12 it was difficult to juggle child care during school holidays. At the time I always thought teaching would be a great profession due to not having to work during the school holidays.

There was no summer clubs either so my parents, in-laws and my lovely gran were a great help - OH, who worked shifts and could help, was a total twat and struggled to take care of himself let alone two energetic girls.

Never mind the holidays.
Do you have any idea how well protected you are as a teacher.
Your pension is gold plated
Your pay progression is set
Maternity leave is good
Holidays are doable but don't forget the other bemefits

Go and work at a local council somewhere. You can be inefficient, rude to customers and do as little work as possible. And never, ever have to go above and beyond, whether that's the hours you work or for your clients. Zero stress because there's zero accountability.

Or maybe this is just my local council.

There’s a good Facebook group that will have answers to your questions. It’s called Life after teaching - Exit the classroom and thrive.