AIBU to be confused about how teachers' salaries are paid?

Teachers do not get paid "untaken" holiday when they leave - but in practice most will give a leaving date at the end of a holiday and start the new job on the first day of the new term - thus achieving unbroken service for things like teachers pensions.

Support staff should have untaken holiday adjusted on leaving.

Some support staff (eg caretakers) work year round etc.

This seems to cause so much
confusion. It isn’t complicated just unusual.

Teachers get paid for their directed time - 1265, plus additional time as required to fulfil their duties, which can be done at a time and place of their choice to some extent, and also their statutory holidays. This is what is divided by 12 and paid equally across the year. Schools are closed for longer than the statutory holidays and this time isn’t paid. That’s where the resentment comes from because the school holidays are sometimes, but not always, paid teacher holidays; other school holidays are unpaid non-working weeks.

Because other professions are not structured this way, the general experience of holidays from work is paid leave. Therefore, there is a general assumption that school holidays are very long periods of paid leave. They’re not. There is often resentment towards teachers due to their unpaid leave from those who don’t understand this. Teachers often have to complete work during their unpaid leave which, when combined with this resentment towards them for having long holidays, sometimes seems unfair.

Whenever there is an attempt to clear up the confusion, teachers are accused of moaning, encouraged to quit or reminded that other jobs can be challenging too.

Maternity pay is shocking, work at the DfE, 28 weeks full pay, work as a teacher, 6 weeks! And not everyone can plan when they get pregnant, took me 4 years to conceive, planning around summer holidays was not an option! I don’t understand how a fully unionised, female dominated profession has got such a poor deal.

School holidays off when kids are school age was lovely though. Plus provided you live long enough public sector pension is decent (although expensive).

Teachers are paid OVER the holidays, not FOR them.

A teacher’s salary is calculated at 39 weeks a year + statutory paid holiday (6 weeks approx). Any remaining time is unpaid, but salary is split equally over 12 months. Your friend is correct.

Trying to compare this to a TA contract or looking at it a different way doesn't change anything.

Teachers cant have it both ways.
Either their pay is a salary that covers the holidays
Or
They are not paid for the holidays & are actually on a higher FTE level of pay

I used to complete payroll for schools - teachers are on a 52 week contract. TA's are paid for 39 weeks of term time + 4/5 weeks holiday entitlement.
So in answer to your question, teachers are paid for the school holidays.

It’s actually dead easy to understand teaching pay tbh. If teaching is a good deal in terms of pay and conditions we’d have people queuing up to do it and very few would leave. In reality we have few wanting to do it (they need massive -bribes- bursaries) and loads leave (around 50% within 5 years). Whether we’re paid for the holiday is neither here nor there - until the government want to increase our working hours.

I love my job. But I don’t have kids and I’m willing to give up a huge proportion my personal time to it because I enjoy it. That’s not a sustainable model though, and newer teachers coming through are less willing to sacrifice / more willing to demand their employment rights are respected.

I absolutely love my school holidays - I career changed to teaching, so I know the ‘other side’ of only getting 4/5 weeks holiday a year, and the struggles with childcare etc. It’s a huge perk to what is a wonderful job. That being said, the workload and mental load are exhausting - and it’s ok for teachers to say that. It doesn’t mean we’re saying other professions aren’t similar. And yes they don’t get the holidays. But having the holidays doesn’t mean we can’t voice our frustrations. The two can co-exist.

I've worked a lot of different careers and I've never worked so many hours and had so few days off for such low pay as when teaching.

Until you've done it, you shouldn't speak about it.

@Glassfulls Sorry meant to put “agree” with your post.
Teachers leave because of conditions,not pay.
Also having 13 weeks sounds amazing but you can’t have time off outside that easily - for those things real life asks for - medical, weddings, family stuff.
Plus school holidays are full of children and very expensive. Once your kids are grown it’s no longer any sort of bonus.

I agree and am sure it must be frustrating, I’m sorry if I have come across that way.

i do think the numbers speak for themselves though, because if the holidays and pay really are so fantastic then why is everyone leaving the profession?

The other extreme is non-teachers who assume it is a very easy job which fits in around family life really well. I think it may have been once, but not any more.

I do sympathise with the holidays though, I am sure it is an absolute nightmare to sort childcare out.

The issue with teaching is that it is literally never done. You could always do a better lesson plan that meets the needs of 30 different kids better, you have to deal
with parents in their time windows and meet professional standards whilst dealing a client who is the exact opposite.

The problem is support staff ARE only paid pro rata. So they advertised wage is nothing like the actual wage once you deduct school holidays .

The issue with teaching is that it is literally never done. You could always do a better lesson plan that meets the needs of 30 different kids better, you have to deal
with parents in their time windows and meet professional standards whilst dealing a client who is the exact opposite.

The problem is support staff ARE only paid pro rata. So they advertised wage is nothing like the actual wage once you deduct school holidays .

I used to agree with you but since Covid and home working started I have really felt the impact of choosing to be a teacher more, because yes we get long holidays (minus the unpaid hours I work in them), but we work long and stressful days, I have no energy left for hobbies in the evenings after co-regulating with the most tricky pupils in my class plus dealing with challenging behaviour and high noise levels each day.

In contrast, many of my friends work from home so can fit life and their own children around their work, they still have stressful jobs but they can go for a run in a lunch break/ do a school run/ flexitime around their kids, and they seem to have a much healthier balance all round, they seem so much calmer. I love my job but I’m not sure the all or nothing high stress then holidays is ideal anymore. I’m overly present for my kids in the holidays but have missed all their school milestones eg their sports days/school plays.

I’m sure some of this is a grass is always greener kind of thing though. I would be upset if my children choose to be teachers and would advise them against it.

While I appreciate teachers saying they work longer hours, so do a lot of other professions. I often start at 8, leave at 5-6pm. Then do another few hours on the evening…. And I don’t get such good holidays.

Teachers do a fantastic job, and I have huge respect. What I always struggle with on threads like this is teachers assuming they are hard done by. There are a LOT of other people who also work over contracted hours, it’s not unique to teaching!

im a teacher and disagree that it is a well paid job because we work well over our contracted hours. Eg mine are officially 8.30am till 3.30pm with a half hour lunch break, but I have a 15minute lunch break, arrive and start working at 7.30am and leave at 5.30 or 6pm plus work through my half day or work half a day of every weekend. It’s impossible for me to do my job without working these substantial extra hours but I can’t claim overtime. If I work out the hours I put in against my salary it comes out pretty much at minimum wage.
That’s before you take into consideration the hundred pounds a year I spend on resourcing my classroom with things like essential stationary for the kids and the breakfast bars I bring in for children whose parents can’t/wont give their kids breakfast/snacks.
I love my job but I should be paid more, in my opinion.

55k is top of the scale (Scotland anyway) so yes it's a good salary after your first 5 years.

Look at the actual hourly rate. Its shit. 50/60 hour weeks for a lot of term time.

I retired last year after teaching 30 years,my salary was not £55k.
That would have been a good salary…

It depends where you live. I had to relocate 200 miles away to be able to buy a house in the 80s. (Even more difficult now I know ) I was reasonably well paid for that area, in other places the salary will seem relatively low.

The salary is for 195 days at work but 1265 hours Directed Time plus the extra hours you put in.I don't think you can dispute that.

People are leaving for a whole host of reasons. Some teachers have degrees which are highly sought after in industry and could be being paid much more. I certainly have lost colleagues for this reason.

And for 1265 hours which includes Parents Consultations, after school meetings and 10% of teaching time PPA (planning, preparation and assessment) . Most teachers work way over that because they do work during the holidays, planning and preparing teaching materials, setting up classrooms ready for the new term/year. When I was DSL, I attended Case Conferences during one summer because a family of 3 siblings had been taken into council care and the process needed to be followed through
But teachers do get fed up of being expected , as a matter of course, to work extra hours/days

Teachers are required to be in site 1265 hours over 195 days per annum. They are required to do other work, at home, to fulfil their duties e.g preparation and marking.

They are paid a salary over 12 months.

They work for 195 days per year.

Teaching is a weird profession. On paper in the standard contract it looks like teachers only work 1265 hours a year with an annual salary split over 12 months. But there is a real deal breaker of a sentence that follows the 1265 hours of " and any other hours deemed reasonable."
This means that 1265 covers pupil contact time, meetings and basic prep and marking. In reality, prep and marking can take a lot more time than is allocated.
For example, when my year 11 students did Mock exams I had 23 hours of exam paper marking to fit in over the 2 weeks Christmas holiday, in addition to any other regular prep and marking for my other classes. (Science) I know, I timed it and I'm an experienced marker! No option to spread it out as results had to be on the database the first week after the Xmas break. A similar exam pattern is seen in the last term.
Some teachers in subjects like English have an even heavier exam marking burden
So some teachers do have to work in the holidays. They don't choose to.
Marking and prep load varies massively between subjects - particularly for secondary. It's not a coincidence that the most marking intensive subjects often have the biggest recruiting problems.
People outside the profession shouldn't just assume that a teacher who leaves work at 4.30 and seems to have lots of holiday isn't actually putting in loads of hidden hours elsewhere . They could be marking as I was or maybe regularly giving up big chunks of their weekends and evenings as PE, Drama, Music and Primary teachers do.
If teaching was such a cushie number trainees wouldn't be leaving the profession in droves within the first couple of years