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

Yes, and a lot of us leave teaching to go back to the ‘normal’ job because it’s a better work-life-money-mental health balance.

All these online experts who know teaching is an easy ride really should start putting their money where their mouth is and sign up for a PGCE.

In our company you start with 25 days plus BH and no option to buy extra, you can apply for parental leave but that is not guaranteed as the needs of other colleagues have to be considered as well. You can move to 30 days plus BH after 10 years by adding a day every 2 years.

I was lucky that I only had to compete with one other colleague sind DD is in school, we managed to find always a decent compromise. But I also have teams in my company where it is a lot more difficult to share the school holidays.

DH and I try to do 2 weeks together in Summer, one week in either Easter, May or October. He covered Christmas as I can't take time off at all and his office always closes and often May if I can't get it off.

And you pay for holiday clubs, they are expensive, if you need 8-6 cover you look at £50/day.

Runningribbit · Today 10:57
I think all teachers should be made to work a year in a “normal” job before they can complain and protest about their jobs.

Most of us have.

I left teaching to go back to industry and I get 27 days plus bank holidays.

Teaching isn’t as family friendly as it seems on the surface- parents evenings, insets, planning and marking evenings and weekends, some schools are really inflexible so you always miss your own nativity/sports day etc. You’re also not really ‘off’ most holidays as there’s so much to do. My kids went to school in a different county and half terms were different to mine. You can WFH through most of the summer though, the days/weeks you’re expected in varies by school.

I will say that I get fewer days off now but when I’m off I’m really off. I can also take a random (half) day here and there for family things. And the money’s a lot better now so we could have nicer holidays and days out. It’s swings and roundabouts really.

I don't know if all councils are the same, but our local one depending on the job you do there's a lot of time during the year where it's dead and you still have to sit at your desk with nothing to do and you're not allowed on the internet or anything, and the rest of the time it's far too busy to cope. If you know anyone who works there or works in the department you'd be in I'd talk to them before applying to see if you can gauge what it's like.

20 + 8 Bank/Public holidays is the minimum for those conditioned to a five day week.

A lot of roles in schools, not just classroom assistants etc, are term time only but with the salary spread over 12 instalments.

Yes this is what I've seen too.

So many people come back and post how much better it is in their life after teaching and how they don't miss the holidays as every weekend feels like a holiday and they're not exhausted from performing everyday.

I have 30+8 with the option to buy another 5. It’s standard in my sector where I work in upper middle management (closely related to LA work). I also work FT with a 9 day fortnight. I have significantly more actual annual leave than my partner who is a teacher.

Try a different school before leaving though, my school had a ridiculous marking policy amongst many other issues whereas DDs school just down the road and part of the same MAT don't mark any books at all they just mark end of unit assessments and live assessment during the lesson, the teacher turnover for her school is much lower and the results are better as teachers aren't shattered.

There's a fab fb page Life After Teaching full of advice and people going through it. Also Adventures After Teaching. It's shockingly common.

Lots of them have and lots of them leave for other jobs hence knowing the difference and being shocked at conditions for teaching currently.

Did you work in England? Primary?
I am genuinely shocked with what you have had to do. Teaching in England seems horrific. I teach in Scotland in secondary. Never work in my holidays. Can do nursery pick ups etc. Sometimes have to mark at night but not every night. Get very good results with my pupils.

I think all teachers should be made to work a year in a “normal” job before they can complain and protest about their jobs.

Yes, but you wouldn’t need childcare for the planning and marking.
I know it FEELS like your holiday is being swallowed up by work, because you’re not mentally switching off, but in reality you’re not working all day every day of half term catching up with marking and planning. I probably used to spend about 6-10 hours every half term catching up with the paperwork, which can actually be done as one hour per evening.

I now have 25 days of annual leave, 8 bank holidays and 18 days of Flexi (toil) that I can take. DD is a teen so childcare isnt an issue

It's great, I always found I worked Sundays often more of the holidays as assessments were done and had to be marked. A day getting the house sorted and running errands I couldn't fit in during term time. Then I'd be run down a bit as my body relaxed.

Now I never work weekends, can claim for any hours worked between 7am -7pm and told not to work outside of this. I can manage my own diary so if I need to take my car for its MOT, dentist appointment, hairdressers then I can just block the time out in my calendar and work around it. I WFH so can keep on top of minor household jobs whilst the kettle boils.

Term time I often do 7am -8am checking and responding to emails and setting up the work for the day, school run, nip to supermarket do a shop whilst there's actually food on the shelves instead of at the end of the day, put shopping away and slow cooker on Then work 9:15-13:00 take an hour for lunch and go for a walk/run in the daylight then work 14:00 - evening. Or I might have an early diner with DD and catch up then finish off later whilst she does her own homework/revision. Fridays I start at 09:30 and clean the house beforehand so it's sorted for the weekend.

School holidays I work 7am-3pm and by the time DD is up and dressed we then have the evening together to go to the cinema / theatre / bowling. If we want to do things during the day I just book Flexi off.

The downside is I find it a bit isolating going from talking to 150 people a day in person to just DD. And I think M better at responsive 'in the moment' jobs rather than solely admin based. My colleagues with children under 10 use wraparound care and holiday clubs though which I believe are ££££

This definitely isn’t my experience. I’ve no idea if this means I’m doing the bare minimum or not but I seem to get everybody through their exams OK.

Well obviously you'd be fine because your partner can do the holidays.
The vast majority of us who are not teachers make do and with a mix of holiday clubs, not taking annual leave at the same time and help from relatives.
30 days plus bank holidays and buy a week is a lot more than most people get.

I left at Christmas and I am starting a very different career path. My new role will be shift work, but working on a 5453 rota (work 5, 4 off, work 5, 3 off). I've worked out that this means I'll have 214 working days (being a teacher is 195 days as you know.) however, I will also be entitled to 25 days of leave (to take when I want!!) plus the option to purchase up to 5 additional days. Which takes my actually days in work to 184.
So although I don't get "the holidays" any more, I will actually have more time off during the year.

So you don’t need all the holidays then, so leave teaching. Simple 🤷‍♀️ if you get a job with flexi working it’s a bonus but other than that the kids childcare would be covered and you’d have normal AL like everyone else, bonus is you can take a day or two to yourself during term time too.

We're you primary or secondary?
As the times you've posted there do not reflect mu primary experience.
Most of that is completed in PPA.

I work for a local authority. I get 33 days leave plus bank holidays. And I can also work overtime and take up to two days of flexi leave every 8 weeks, so potentially another 13 days! Maxed out it comes to over 10 weeks off per year, so definitely possible to find roles where this is the case. I’m not even a manager.

It depends on where you live with holiday childcare

It isn't an issue around here - loads of options - and if you have a partner, you don't need all that much holiday childcare either.

I have BH plus 30 days plus the option to buy days plus I theoretically could take unpaid parental leave although I never did. There are very few limits at work on when we can take leave so things slow down in August and almost completely shut down over Christmas but we aren't public facing so it doesn't matter. I have an incredibly generous package, it is very unusual, DH works in the public sector and has less generous standard holidays, although he did take unpaid parental leave when the DC were small.

The legal minimum requirement for annual leave is 28 days but that can include bank holidays so that then becomes just 4 weeks.

As for how we managed it? We only took annual leave in the school holidays, DH and I took the bulk of our holiday at different times so we could cover more of the school holidays and the kids spent approximately half of each holiday except Christmas in holiday clubs. We had no help from grandparents. We did work PT when the kids were young but that means your holiday and BH allowance reduces pro-rata so Monday is the most popular day to not work so you don't have to use up annual leave on BHs. Since the pandemic DH WFH and I'm hybrid and as the kids have got older it's been possible to WFH when they are on holiday because they don't need you all the time (in fact, now we have teenagers they sometimes cook lunch for us when we are WFH).