to think this woman has no need to apologise for ending her mat leave when she chooses

[lecce]

I am a teacher and am getting seriously pissed off with the comments from my colleagues about a teacher who has been off for about a year and is coming back to work a week before the six-week holiday. She is doing this, I assume because 5 years ago I did the same, because you are not allowed to say you are returning to work during the 6-week break (because you can't really go back) but if your entitlment runs out during that time you face a few weeks with no pay at all.

I assume that this woman, like me, cannot afford the few weeks with no money coming in but wants to maximise the time she can have off. People I work with are saying what a "nerve" she has etc but surely she is doing what is right for her and her family and is not cheating anyone? After all, it's not her fault that this is how the dates have worked out and that there is a 6-week holiday at this time, is it?

I don't really know why I'm so bothered (except I do because several of the people who go on about it were here when I did more or less the same, so I assume they talked about me in the same nasty way they talk about her but have now forgotten my circs) but it depresses so much that people (and women in particular) are so bitchy about each other and quick to believe the worst.

Mary the covering teacher wouldn't be getting paid for the summer anyway. Supply teachers don't get their pay spread out in the same way as permanent teachers.

Everyone on the same band (supply or not) gets the same rate for their work, paid based on 195 days a year. Permanent or contract teachers get this spread across the year, supply teachers get paid 1/195th of the annual salary for each day worked. No teacher gets actual paid holiday.

Don't teachers get paid less if they choose to get paid every week of the year as opposed to the ones who don't get paid during holidays I think it works out to be the same ammount but gets spread out,I know what I'm trying to say but might not be saying it right.

Anyways that irrelivant she's damn well entitled to do that so fair play to her, weirdest thing I've discovered since becoming pregnant whils being an employee (as opposed to owning my own company) is other females can be shockingly bitchy and unpleasent often getting very close to bullying and will often pick on anything they either don't understand or percive as being something they don't get to do irrespective of the why's or how's ect
Yanbu your being decent

I wonder then when exactly it would be acceptable for a teacher to return to work. 2 weeks before the holidays start? A month before? Surely you can't expect teachers to wait (without pay) for the start of the next term after they're ready to return?

As long as they give adequate notice of their return date, so the supply cover can be arranged for the appropriate time, I don't see the problem. Maternity-cover temp contracts will always be of varying lengths as different women choose to take different lengths of leave.

"Bloody hell Athing did a teacher sell yo a dodgy car or steal your cat?"

:o

Worse than that - one of the fuckers raised me!

I have a very high opinion of teachers, I'm always defending them on "holidays too long" threads.

I just don't have a particularly high opinion of people in public service jobs who think they need only suit themselves when it comes to availing themselves of very generous provisions for time off.

In the example given, it makes perfect sense to come back for a week.

But the message I'm hearing is that even if students were negatively affected there is no reason on earth to take even the tiniest bit of notice.

You have lots of choice in when you come back if you don't want to lose holiday pay. You aren't forced to back one week before. If it was better to come back a month before and you wouldn't consider that because you want every second of time you can grab, then you can expect people to think you are being selfish. Because you are.

"This is one time it is about me and my family and our needs."

So you're quitting your job then?

Or are you going to balance the needs of your work with those of family like the rest of us who work?

Wasn't expecting this still to be going. There is nothing quite like being the child of a teacher, is there athing? ;)

I am not sure anyone has meant that the needs of the pupils are not important. I genuinely believe that this timing is actually better for all concerned than starting back at a brand new term. I cannot imagine what a head fuck that would be - all those new classes looking at you expectantly when you are struggling to cope with bells and empty arms.

We move forward into the new timetable a month before summer so my new classes will start initially without me but I will pick up within 3 weeks. I know this is not ideal but surely no worse than those classes I will be leaving in november. I am genuinely gutted not to be seeing my certificate classes through to the end but for once in my career I need to put school second.

In other jobs, you know, ones with paid holidays, which teachers do not get you can tack your accrued holidays onto the end of your ML so you don't have the crappy/ nil pay bit. Nobody moans about that, do they?

Teachers can't do that - except, essentially, by doing what this person is doing.

Yanbu it has nothing to do with them.

No, not quitting but I will be going PT, (not that it is anything to do with you). I don't feel that I could give the time I want to to my LO working the hours I do at the moment.

I won't have a class from sept as it would upset them to have me for a few weeks so will be supporting the NQT's we are having in, covering classes and doing booster groups. When I return I'll have a week or two to see what changes have happened over the year (and knowing our school there will be lots) and then will have to summer 'holiday' to plan, organise the classroom etc for september.

I can't see how this will have any impact on any child in the school - it has to be better than me leaving them mid way through the year and then returning mid way to another class and taking over from someone they have got to know well.

I'm not sure what you think would be better?

And the allowance for teachers is considerably less than that offered by many private companies employing people (women) with comparable qualifications to teachers.

But of course, if you work in the public sector your needs, and those of your dependants, must always come second to those of the rest of the population.

Btw, I firmly believe no pupils will be disadavantaged by this woman's actions, nor were they by mine 5 years ago, imo.

Why do the teachers never take their strike days or their training days during their long long holidays they have every few weeks of the year?

The training days are included in the 195 days per year that teachers are paid for, Novack.

Not all teachers strike, either, there are a number of unions.

But those training days still inconvenience many people when they could be done during one of the many long breaks of the year and those that do vote for strikes could have their protests marches through the streets any day they like during the warmer summer days but of course that might hinder their long holidays and taking on other jobs during those long breaks

Yes, taking "our strike days" (they are unpaid, you know) in our holidays (also unpaid, technically) - that would show them.

School holidays are technically unpaid, so no one has a right to expect teachers to agree to training days during them.

The only reason teachers get a wage during holidays,,is because their annual salary is split into 12 for convenience. What they receive during holidays is actually payment for work already done iyswim

Teachers do not choose the INSET days, Novack.

Workers strike when it's going to be most, not least, effective. It's about showing power, maximise the inconvenience, not minimise it.

I don't know any teachers who take other paid work during their holidays (most are far too busy doing school-related work), but they're as entities as anyone else to do what they like. Aren't they?

Entitled.

echt You hit the nail on the head there. The public sector really are one of the groups in society who feel ENTITLED to do anything that suits them first.

I work in the public sector.
I feel entitled to work overtime with no pay.
Use my own car and pay for my own petrol
Buy my own toys to use with my families.
Have my work phone on so famlies and professionals can contact me out of hours because my working hours are so limited.

Fnar Novack. You don't quite understand, do you?

MrsDeVere

I understand that if public sector teachers with there golden public sector pensions and contracts that make it very difficult to sack them for being incompetent cared about education cuts for the effect on the children and not for their own pockets or possible lack of tenure for life that they could strike and protest during the hols and camp outside the local education offices etc and make a fuss there but instead they're usually more interested in their own hols and disrupting the general public and losing the sympathy that may have been there.

I did this twice with my dds (no planning involved, I wish I was that bloody organised!).

Ds, otoh, was born at the start of August, not only obliging me to take the hols as ML but also condemning him to 16 years + of being the youngest in his class.

"paid holidays, which teachers do not get"

teachers do get paid holidays, it's the law that all employees get paid holidays.

It's just that they have a lot of days in excess of normal holidays so the fiction of the rest of their holidays being unpaid and their small number of days a year being all they are paid for was created.

When did this happen by the way?

Teachers get long, inflexible holidays. It's a big perk of the job, but it certainly has its drawbacks.

But this bollocks about how it is "unpaid" is ludicrous. You are paid a salary for a year's service. Your year's service is a hell of a lot shorter than most salaried workers.

Which is as it should be. But don't act all hard done by because you "don't get paid for holidays". It makes you sound ridiculous.

"Why do the teachers never take their strike days... during their long long holidays they have every few weeks of the year?"

:o

Ha ha ahahahahahahahaha.

OR they could strike AT NIGHT! :o

That'd show us!

I dont have a pension.
Just sayin