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

Their salary is technically only for term time
only but paid spread across 12 months.

You do get paid in August. You get paid for 1265 hours (although this in under threat) and it’s divided by 12.

Those hours include parents evenings, twilight training, morning briefing, meetings. You’re often required to attend a “quick meeting “ after school, before school or lunch - unscheduled and not directed time.

Many teachers work over Easter and half terms.

Realistically you get 3-4 weeks off (if you choose to) over summer but most teachers try and prep for year ahead and many go into school to do admin and displays, tidy up, coursework marking and so on.

There are many surveys and studies to support that teachers work around 60 hours a week and at least one day at weekends. So the 1265 doesn’t cover it.

Yeah you get good holidays but you can’t not look after your elderly parents , or clean your house, go to the dentist, eat healthily and so on until August. And of course, you pay top dollar for holidays.
I taught for 25 years and then went off sick with WRS and subsequently retired.

I miss the kids and teaching, I don’t miss pointless admin and automated behaviour monitoring.

Most of all I don’t miss the daily (including holidays and weekends) strategising about how I was going to fit everything in. It’s a shame but modern teaching is no way to live.

Teachers get paid for 1265 hours, or 195 days. In reality, teachers work way more hours than that. I'd say about triple that, including in the holidays. The pay is split up over 12 months but the reason it's so low in comparison to other professional roles is because it's only a part time wage.

My Mum was a teacher ..my Dad always used to say her hourly rate was rubbish watching her work evenings and weekends and more. I agree

How weird indeed!🙄

It's weird because my friend is a teacher, very rarely works past 5.30 and seems to have all holidays properly off, too. She's very organized and has been a teacher for a long time.

This-it comes up when people (usually parents who want more their children in school for more hours as childcare is so expensive) suggest increasing the term length without considering that you the huge cost it would incur. My favourites are the ones who say the 5 INSET days should just ‘come out of the teachers holidays as they get so much time off’ without realising…they already did,

Ah everybody hates a teacher. These threads only go one way

I don't think it matters. They are paid an annual salary in 12 installments.
I think the argument that they're not paid for holidays causes some resentment as every teacher I know works a good percentage of those holidays. In summer it's planning for the year ahead. Christmas it's marking mocks and Easter it's going in to school to do revision sessions as well as marking.

This frequently comes up and I think its when people talk about reducing the holidays, working longer hours. Teacher contracts in most schools (some academies have different contracts) state 1265 directed time, so teaching, tutor times, meetings, inset, parents evenings over the 39 weeks school is open. Most do more but that's covered with the 'plus additional hours to perform all duties'.

If the holidays were reduced or the school day extended this is where the contracts would need to be looked at. 1265 is approx 6.5 hours a day for 39 weeks (teachers do 39, students do 38 due to INSET days). We are not paid for lunchtimes. If the holidays were reduced teacher contracts would need to be renegotiated as we would be working more hours for the same pay.

I will say I am a teacher who does very little work during the holidays so never state that.

I am changing jobs this summer and had to fight tooth and nail to get my summer pay. As stated above, I am paid for a certain amount of hours, over so many weeks, which is then pro rated over 12 months. Therefore, I have worked the hours over the academic year, and so I should receive the summer pay.
The school lawyer also told them that they have to pay me…

(left a really bitter taste in my mouth, especially considering how many additional hours I have worked over the last ten years, marking students works, planning projects and preparation for lessons. Thankfully new school seems to be all above board!)

Holidays they don't get paid for. It's a shitty job frankly, and I hope that one day very soon my DP is able to join the exodus leaving the profession. The only thing he enjoys is teaching the kids and seeing their excitement/happiness when they do well at something, but the rest of the job – the insane workload, the demands from the SLT, dealing with entitled parents who think he's their personal employee/childminder – is wearing him down. I don't think people realise how bad the recruitment and retainment crisis is in schools.

What about all the unpaid hours they do.

No, but you'll return to work for a day or two at the end of term and be paid for the following August 😉

Most teachers, it seems to me plan their maternity leaves so they start in September/October and end in July.

Equally there's not many jobs where you have such long holidays. So a bit of swings and roundabouts.

The biggest scandal for me is maternity pay for teachers. If you give birth end of July, you’ll have worked your full 1265 hours but don’t get full pay for August!

At the very least, we get statutory annual leave bundled into our pay packet - we just don't get to choose when we take it obviously. The complaints about pay are that they haven't adjusted for inflation over the last 20 odd years, and that the starting salary is very decent, but doesn't rise enough with experience, so a teacher with 20+ years experience isn't earning that much more than an ECT. As others have said though, most teachers I know are happy with their salaries. Working conditions are a different matter.

Except no teacher ever works just their 1,265 directed hours. The average teacher puts in between 780-1k additional unpaid hours over the course of the 38 weeks that they're in school. There aren't many professions where you're under pressure to work so many hours for free.

No, the exact opposite. Support staff have to repay any unpaid leave element they haven't worked. Teachers don't because there isn't any.

I left due to poor pay.

Then that confirms that technically they don’t get paid for their holidays doesn’t it.

However, if many teachers got paid for the actual hours they do and the resources they supply out of their pocket they would get paid more

Teacher’s pay is abysmal and per hour, due to the relentless unpaid overtime, works out not much more than minimum wage.

No teachers leave and are paid to their last day, regardless of when it falls in the year. Support staff may owe or be owed pay depending on how much of their unpaid time they've worked.

You're absolutley right, but all the money in the world isn't going to change that. The pay is not what's wrong with teaching.

Yes, I believe it works out at 26 days a year that are unpaid holidays for teachers (in Scotland anyway).