AIBU to ignore GCSE results queries during holidays before maternity leave?

It would take 30 minutes and a phone call.

She is pregnant, not chronically ill.

I'm not being a martyr. I'm being a teacher. I spend 2 years teaching a GCSE class so their results are important.

Why can't you just let them know when you will be available and find out why they need a quick word?

I don't know. Being able to delay the start of maternity leave until the last minute because you are on holiday anyway sounds like quite a perk to me.
OP, as pps have said, you are either still at work or you are not. You can't delay ml to maximise pay/time off then complain you are not being treated as if you were on ml.

Have any teachers on here said that only teachers work 60hours per week?

Teachers cannot "book" annual leave, it is specified by the school/LEA/Mat that they work in.

I’m on the fence. I can see that you’re on leave and close to due date, but you are not on maternity leave and it’s exam results time.

But sometimes this is part of being in a professional occupation. I get interrupted a fair bit on holiday (NHS), only with important stuff but it happens. I’ll answer any easy things or delegate anything time consuming. I just accept that it’s part of the job. I would have thought exam time would be the same. I would have taken the call from my senior. Perhaps you should have messaged the kids before you left to confirm the correct chain for exam results queries in your absence.

Have you heard directly from your HOD? To me that is who should be dealing with this. If they contacted me though to say they wanted to check my thoughts then I would probably chat to then about it generally (with them having looked it up and just wanting a confirmation over whether I though Freddie would have done better).

I think you need to stop checking work messages though. As someone else says you need to set it up to auto reply saying you are on maternity leave, and to please contact HOD on your absence.

Edit! Sorry I thought it was senior leadership who contacted you. Your HOD clearly values your perspective so I would definitely chat to them about it. You are the one who presumably knows the students in question best so I would have a chat to HOD about it.

Yep. I have never had a problem with taking annual leave and switching off. I've worked for big global corporates mostly, and a semi-mature 20year old company.

Not just me either - there is a culture of "no, theyre on holiday so how can we work around this?"

I think this happens understandably to senior people and voluntarily to less senior people with no boundaries.

It's usually possible for most people to say to work they'll be uncontactable and not get push back.

I don’t fully understand teachers holidays but I believe there’s an understanding that you work some of the holidays so it’s reasonable that would include results day. Your not on mat leave because you opted to give your maternity start date as end of summer to maximise time off. If you are not fit to work you would need to start mat leave early.

How would the teacher who emailed you know that you would have chosen to start maternity leave already? I chose not to start until 39 weeks and wanted to be involved in stuff until I went out.
Just chat with him if you are capable of it.

Agreed. It's always worrying to realise how many teachers seem to have no concept of what many jobs are like

Plenty of solicitors will earn less than teachers. Not all branches of the profession are high rolling.

And I can think of many other professions (particularly many public sector workers I know) who do long hours and pick stuff up when on holiday.

I dont recognise the notion that only teachers and the best paid professionals (eg lawyers & accountants) work 60 hour weeks & are expected to work whilst on annual leave.

More fool you. People fought for their right to annual leave. Why give it up so freely?

It's universal but common enough to not seem unusual. My husband takes phone calls, sends the occasional email during holiday, I often do the same. I took my work laptop on honeymoon, joined a zoom meeting whilst abroad on holiday with a 6 week old etc. Oh, whilst getting paid less than a teacher.

It's not ideal and I've tightened my boundaries in recent years, but something relatively brief soon a long summer holiday doesn't sound particularly arderous to me.

Are you on actual booked annual leave? In that case YANBU. Just put an Out of Office on your email and forget about it. You’re allowed to have a holiday!

YANBU, Jeez they want their pound of flesh don't they? You are not only likely to give birth but unwell also.

Teachers frequently work 60 hour weeks and are not paid at the same rate as e.g. solicitors or doctors.

No, it isn't universal to be expected to be reachable when on holiday. And teachers are not actually paid for most of the time off so it's unpaid overtime. Teachers are paid for 1265 hours plus directed time (staff meetings, training days, parents' evenings, marking etc) and get the same (up to) 28 days paid leave everyone else gets. Their salaries are paid across the year but I have long thought that pay should be for term time and paid holiday so we are clear that the rest of the holidays is not for school work. (One would have to save from salary to cover , of course, and I am not suggesting lowering salaries, just not spreading payments across the year.)

You can't really believe that?
It's fairly normal in any professional job to have to be contactable sometimes when on leave

Just as it is fairly normal in professional jobs to have to do long hours at evenings and weekends.

I don't understand teachers who think these things are unique. Do you not know any other professionals?

You aren't on maternity leave and although I know teachers are not actually paid for the whole 10 weeks holiday (only for the usual 28 days) you are still employed by the school and you ought to have replied about the remarks if only to say you don't feel you can participate much at 39 weeks but will help in any way you can. It would have been polite and you are not on maternity leave - are you not thinking of going back to the school? Because if you are, the HoD won't forget this and schools are political minefields.

As several PP have pointed out, it is absolutely acceptable and even sometimes expected to be reachable during holidays in other professions.

You may not officially be on maternity leave but you are on holiday. Stop looking at TEAMs! Job done. Maternity pay for teachers is so poor that it’s an actual scandal. Don’t be guilt tripped into working above an and beyond your contract. The papers can be remarked without your involvement. Rest up and prepare for motherhood x

My babies were born before the days of year long maternity leave, with No 1 my waters broke on Wednesday, a month early, so I was kept in hospital, it was just 2 weeks after I stopped working, on that day I marked some exam papers I'd promised to mark, on the Thursday I wrote my newspaper column and on the Friday she was born! Kept me from being bored out of my skull.