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

One caveat I would add about holiday camps is that a lot of them do not run useful hours. Even with extended hours, the best we have locally is 8-6.

Where I am, the hours are dreadful. 10-2 is normal fgs.

Even the latter is not a given now as academies have the ability to set holiday dates. It used to be dictated by the council. I think the academies think they’re doing everyone a favour by potentially getting cheaper holidays but don’t think about teachers who have children or families who have primary and secondary aged children. I have colleagues who are off the week after their children in both February and October. It’s daft!

Half terms are only 3 weeks of the year where we live so split between you both (assuming 2 parents) isn't much at all. Also May HT is also the BH week. It's more the summer holidays and Easter that are an issue for childcare.

Teaching is not family friendly. You're not going to be able to 'have the holidays'. So many colleagues leave once they have DC for this reason: teaching is inflexible and the workload, even if part time, too overwhelming. Once you have DC, it can be upsetting that you're making big sacrifices in terms of time, working long evenings and weekends (and during the holidays!), and being your sparkliest professional best for the benefit of other people's DC while your own get the exhausted, stressed, wrung-out version of you.

Same, and we also split the summer holidays a little with a good friend (so childcare spread across 4 parents’ annual leave).

Also, there is unpaid parental leave - one week per child per parent per year until either 16 or 18. Need to be taken in blocks of 1 week, and are not the same as emergency leave.

Although DP can WFH a few times a week, so from the summer holiday between year 4 and 5, we didn’t book DC into clubs on DP’s WFH days, as they could reliably entertain themselves, and thus only needed an adult in the house for safety, but not for engagement.

It worked quite well as spending the whole summer holiday in various clubs was quite tiring, and they were getting a bit bored of the same things over and over again. So a couple of days a week of downtime, mooching around doing craft, playing and reading leavens holiday camp days out very nicely.

DC is late summer-born, so depending on the child, this might be possible earlier into year 4.

One caveat I would add about holiday camps is that a lot of them do not run useful hours. Even with extended hours, the best we have locally is 8-6.

It is one of the reasons I am stuck with teaching! It isn’t the length of the holidays, it’s the childcare.

DH gets 20 days plus between Christmas and New Year.
I get 30 days and buy 5.

We need 10 days together for annual holiday so the other days are used during holidays.
DH would take every Monday off of the holiday.
I would take every Wednesday and Friday and we'd need GP or care the other days.

I had a few floating days to cover sickness of the DC.

Being completely honest about it, the summer holidays are a total nightmare for us. We're in ROI and the holidays are even longer than in the uk.

DH works for himself and I can wfh in these situations if necessary, but the work still needs to be done and so, while ferrying kids to camp during the day, the hours are made up in early mornings and into the night. Which sucks.

Am I reading it right that you don't have kids yet?
Are you planning these children with a partner? If so it's not 30 days, it's 60ish days to cover the holidays, depending on your AL allowances.

And you do what the rest of the working population does and stumble through primary school years using a combination of yours & partners annual leave, clubs, childminders and if you're fortunate, family/friends and flexi-time.

Personally, I find my teacher friends are either in a classroom with children or looking after their own because they're all on holiday. At least with my 30 days I get an occasional afternoon to myself.

Generous holidays IMO, should not be the decider for the rest of your working life, particularly when that work involves shaping children's education and wellbeing.

Outside of a term time only job there's no guarantee that you can take all of your annual leave during school holidays. There may be a need to keep set staffing levels all year round and everyone with kids will be competing to take all their leave in the same 14 or so weeks.

I realise teaching is not great for very many reasons but at least you know that your time off will coincide with your children's holidays

The majority of parents are not teachers. The majority of us do not have 30 days annual leave and an option to buy more.

Most try to share care during school holidays between both DC parents, relatives and holiday clubs etc That’s what you have to do.

Also please don’t be a teacher if you do not like being a teacher ? That’s not good for your health.
How will you support the children you teach if you are in a job ( and headspace) you don’t want to be in.

I get 30 days AL plus BH but that's only because I've been at my job so long, it was 25 days to start with. And I don't have any option to buy extra leave.

SCHOOLS aren’t really parent friendly are they? For teachers or for working parents!

Oh, and I have a job which means I can take leave when works for me - I don't have to share a calendar with anyone. That would significantly hinder my ability to be off school holidays if me and a colleague had to share them out.

I get 31+8 and usually am able to take the Christmas fortnight, the Feb half term, the May half term, two weeks in Summer and the Oct half term.

Thankfully dh is term time only, but if not, he would have to take off the Easter fortnight and the remaining 4 summer weeks (or we would pay for clubs then).

Just to give an idea of what 30+8 would cover.

It's unlikely you'd get 30 days off until you'd worked there for a decent amount of time, presuming you work somewhere that rewards loyalty with extra days off. It's usually one day per year, at the very best.

30 days plus bank holidays wouldn't be a normal holiday pattern, it'd usually be 20 + 8 or 25 + 8, and the option to buy extra time doesn't always exist.

As a former teacher, I'm struggling to understand how you currently have all the school holidays. I never had a half term, what with catching up on marking, getting ahead with prep. One week at Easter, one week at Christmas, then coming in for results in the summer and in a week before the start of term to set up and prep. You must be doing the bare minimum. I'm out of teaching now, and my six weeks plus bank holidays feels like more than I had when teaching.

30 days is massive. 20 is minimum.

30 days plus 8 days BH is fairly unusual. You're more likely to get 25 + 8, or 20 + 8 which is the statutory minimum.

We survive with lots of holiday clubs/childcare swaps. It's doable.

I absolutely would retrain or find a way out before kids. 100%. It's so hard to do later. Teaching is not very family friendly and exhausting. Find soemthing more flexible

We share annual leave between us and use holiday clubs.

I’m a teacher too.
Since kids I’ve worked lots of part time variations - 2/3/4/4.5 days. The job is so much harder once you have kids with all the juggling and workload so unless you have a partner who can do lots of the drop offs or pick ups (even if they’re at your school or before and after school club) then it will feel like you’re doing everything badly.

I don’t know how people manage childcare in the holidays - my guess is family support or paying out for holiday clubs.

If you’re wanting to leave now then you definitely will want to after kids. Maybe try something new now and see how you feel and if you could afford all the holiday clubs you’d need.

If you want to guarantee that you will be off all the school holidays then the only way to do that is do a job which is term time only.

Do you know what you would be moving to, because that sounds optimistic? I’ve never had 30 days plus bank holidays in the private sector.

I would say with kids three days a week teaching plus all the holidays could be a pretty good option. Depends how much you hate teaching and want to leave I suppose. I now work in a school though not as a teacher and gosh those holidays are helpful.