AIBU? Working during annual holiday

You are not a qualified teacher and your position is not relevant. Although I do sympathise! Who is expecting you to respond, normally you should be able to put on an ooo stating when you’ll be back and answer then.

No, it’s really cheeky. Put on an ooo that says you’re on leave and will be back on x date. Respond then.

I’m on 25k and expected to be responsive lol, you get 13 weeks off a year!!!

I have 3 kids with Sen and often emailed teachers late at night as it was simply when I had time to compose the email. I was mortified when I got a response. I started making it clear at the beginning of the email that I didn’t expect a response out of working time.

you wouldn’t (be reasonable for) accost your gp in town so why is a teacher acceptable?

What happens if you are off sick?
Have you ever had mat leave ie. someone else needed to do you work?

I take my laptop and phone on AL with me because there are things i need to do for work that my colleagues can't do.
My caveat is that i'll get to them same day but it might be in the evening when im back at hotel etc.
I also cover them if i'm sick.

Its a bit of a pain as i never really get to relax fully, but i accept its part of a job that runs 24/7 due to international clients, and my boss is really flexible with me because im flexible for the business.

What is the expectation within your school? If there is an expectation that you should be available to reply to emails during school holidays then I guess you need to do it. Whether it's reasonable or not is something you need to raise with your line manager.
If there is no expectation but you're taking it upon yourself to reply and then feeling miffed about it, then it's on you.
If parents don't receive a reply yet think they should then they can raise that with the school.
Surely your school has a policy they make parents aware of?

As a parent I would expect someone in management to be contactable over the school holidays, but only to deal with issues that cannot wait until term time (safeguarding, major change in family circumstances), not just "can you tell me which edition of the set English book to get?").

Is that not technically the same? In Scotland, teachers use their 40 days of annual leave during specific school holiday periods as recommended by the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT). This leave is automatically assigned during school closures rather than taken at random times during the term. 15 days in the summer, 10 at Christmas, 10 at Easter and 5 in September/October. Whilst teachers in England are only getting 28 days, I suspect that they also get public holidays on top of that which would bring them closer to the arrangement in Scotland in terms of time off?

You are not being unreasonable not to work.

But that said I work in higher education and almost everyone answers emails and may do some work during annual leave.

That's interesting, but it works slightly differently in England and Wales.

Teachers still have the statutory 28-day annual leave entitlement like everyone else, but it's deemed to be taken during school closure periods rather than being separately identified as contractual leave. So it can be interpreted differently.

On most threads teachers claim / insist
to be working all through the holidays so maybe they assume you are based upon that.

If you don’t want to see work emails on annual leave, don’t look at work emails ok annual leave and/or don’t give parents your personal email.

I’m a nurse. I am constantly being asked for medical advice and opinions whether it’s my day off, a night out or if I’m on annual leave 🙂

Put an auto reply on emails saying you will get back to them as soon as possible on your return after the holidays. Noone expects a reply

There were mobiles in the last few years of my working life but not smart phones. Thank goodness. I have always been the past mistress at being "unavailable" unless it suited me. I worked in a uni and you were not allowed to take calls in the library so I would always say I was going there. The only time my phone was on was when I went out to do an interview for a project. For security we had to let the uni know where we were going, when we arrived and when we left. I'm old now so I can get away with weaponised incompetence when it comes to missing calls. hahaha

I understand checking the emails for your own reasons, tying up what didn't get done at the end of term or in prep for returning, but parents' routine queries should be left until then.

School is open for 190 days and it's currently closed.

I think, personally, it's different if a child is trying to work independently during holidays just before exams or school mocks and asks for some support, but there's no obligation to be available.

Isn’t that the whole point of sending a email, the receiver can reply when they want to. So in this case the start of term? If it was a phone call I would say you had a point but I’m sure the parents are not expecting you to reply over the summer

Parents can email when it's convenient for them, you can respond when it's convenient for you - and probably best to set an out of office setting out when they can expect responses. Under promise, over deliver.

I wouldn't check my work emails when on leave. As a teacher I might set aside an hour or so every week to read and send any necessary responses during summer holidays, maybe every other week.
If a customer bumped into me in town and had a brief chat about work while I was on leave it wouldn't bother me, but if it kept happening I'd probably avoid the area 😆

I'm middle managment and on approx £60k. I would not respond to clients whilst on annual leave. In fact I dont even have my work email installed on my phone. I would answer a call from colleagues and respond to their queries.

In Scotland school holidays were split into 'annual leave' (40 days per year) and 'school closures' when they weren't required to work about fifteen years ago because before that it had been established by case law that if a teacher was on maternity leave they accrued annual leave based on the days the schools were closed. That would mean that if they were on maternity leave for a full calendar year they could accrue about 70 days paid leave to use at the end of their maternity leave. Splitting the school holidays into annual leave and school closures meant that teachers on mat leave could only accrue a similar amount of leave to other public sector employees (40 days per year). Salary was unaffected by this change so it's not true say that these school closures became unpaid. Unfortunately over the years this has led to the misinterpretation that teachers are unpaid for the 'school closures' and therefore would be paid more if these did not exist, with some arguing that disadvantages them compared to other professions. I expect similar measures were put in place around the same time in England since the right to accrued leave comes from employment and equality legislation which are both UK-wide.

parents are bloody entitled if they expect responses in the summer holidays. if it's a more structural question into the SLT that's one thing, but asked the subject or form teacher about little jenny's progress is out of order

You are on holiday. They shouldn't be emailing and you shouldn't be replying... The only exception to this would be something

• really big and terrible like a child in your class being diagnosed with cancer
• less terrible but that might massively affect your teaching or whether a child could attend school - a child has badly broken their leg and school needs to have things in place to manage their condition on their return and parent needs advanced warning about whether the school will be ok with their child attending normally in case they need to take time off work or something.

Full-time teachers get paid for 1,265 hours of teaching, paid in 12 monthly installments. Their pay is not pro-rata'd down due to the holidays, they are just not teaching when school isn't in session and therefore 'not paid', but if a full time teacher salary is £54k, for example, then it is £54k split across 12 months, with school holidays 'off'.

The pay includes statutory holiday pay (which works out to about 28 days paid holiday) and the rest of the time is a bit of a grey area. It's not holiday but it's not technically paid, but also it is technically paid, as pay doesn't 'stop' in the holidays.

It's confusing!

I wouldn't expect a reply during the holidays.

Is it a personal email account? Or a work one? If a work one, why are you checking it? If a personal one, why are you using it for work purposes? Separate the usage of the two and separate your checking of them.

You need to put your OOO on, include a note to contact the DSL if a child is in danger and stop checking your emails.

FWIW though, as a teacher, you are not technically 'on annual leave'.

Agreed with PP that for a full time equivalent non-teaching job of between 50-60k, yes, there are some occasions when you have to deal with stuff on your AL.