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.

ceeveebee 6 months full pay!! and then 6 months half pay!! I fucking wish... No, we get 2 weeks full pay, 4 weeks at 90percent and then 18 weeks half pay with SMP. That is why I'm going back when DD is only 3.5months as I'm the only consistent earner in our household and we're skint. Bloody hell, get your facts straight mate!

And as far as hols go - I make sure christmas and summer are holiday but do go back to school 2 days before start in september, the other hols are often used up in marking, planning and sometimes coaching lazy arses so that 13 weeks gets reduced somewhat and when you factor in the bank hols etc over christmas, you'll probably find that my 13 hols do actually = your 30 days.

Inset days are drivel. Fact. But i am a teacher and have no choice over the dates or content of them. I would prefer to teach the extra 5 days, it disrupts the children, they miss out on some lessons and it can take some time to settle them back down especially if the inset day is on a random monday in the year, not attached to holidays.

However we have sidestepped the op and slid into teacher bashing again. It is a womans right in any industry to return from maternity leave when she chooses. Like another poster has said other industries can tag on holiday accrued to the end of their maternity leave - teachers can't. Why should a woman sacrifice her right to return to work (providing she has followed the rules on notifications etc) because some other teachers are bitching? (believe me a staffroom is one of the bitchiest places on earth)

Also to the person who said teachers plan this to happen- maybe some do however i am due in september after gettng pregnant after a miscarriage at 12 weeks in november. It wasnt planned to the date, i am just blessed that it has happened at all. Like i would have been blessed if i hadnt had the m/c and would have been sat here cuddling my newborn. Anyone who can time a conception that finely, well done them.

Anyone can apply and train to be a teacher if they want to. If you think that teaching is all about the pay and holidays and dinely tuned matenity pay why arn't you doing it too?

Am also laughing at the 6 months full pay.
......and thinking of the holiday this week that i have spent marking and planning for next year.

Novack I've admitted to being a teacher and am being open about how the maternity pay works and yes, in our school we feel it is fair to pay both the returning and the cover teacher for the hols.

I have never felt it necessary to be told about these same details from say my insurance company or my electricity providers. I know that what I pay them goes towards what is provided to their employees but I really couldn't give a rat's arse about how much hols, maternity, pension they get.

Why is it that public servents' work entitlements become such a big issue? Yes, it is paid for out of your taxes but you go towards paying the wages of the supermarket shelf-stacker and the deep-sea oil miner when you use those services too!

What do you do for a living? 30 days hols per year is quite a good package. Who is paying for that? Oh yeah, that'll be the jo public wouldn't it?

Teachers can cover a maternity leave on a short term contract.

For instance, regular teacher goes on mat leave in the autumn.

Termporary teacher comes in on a regular wage (not supply teacher wage) to take on her responsibilities.

Regular teacher returns on the first day of the summer holiday. Temp teacher doesn't get paid for the summer, even though she has worked all through the summer term.

larks35 30 day hols would be good for many private sector workers but teachers get plenty more than that.

Billing us the tax payers for two covering one job is rather disingenuous and is exactly the kind of thing that the public expect is going on and you know where would a public sector worker get away with that. Unless it involves selling to the MoD or the NHS.

It's the publics business because unlike the private sector we're paying for you through taxation whether we use you service or not and the lack of accountability and perceived inability to get rid of poor performing individuals particularly in the state education sector is seen in bad light by most of the public. And lets face it whilst some individuals amongst your number may be good excellent and outstanding and probably the better of you are the mumsnet, guardian reading types there are a vast majority tat despite all there claims of being brilliant at there jobs have not exactly provided a top class education system compared to the rest of Europe are they.

NonnoMum in your example, her job should come with a certain amount of holiday entitlement, so when she finishes prior to the hols she should get a payment for holidays in her wages. Might not be equal to the 6 weeks or whatever, but you can't work for a term without building up some holiday entitlement.

Not sure you can blame individual teachers for that Novack. Start with the top. The government, all these 'initiatives' and of course Ofsted.

Yup you can - happened to me.
Pay just stopped on the last day of summer term.
Regular teacher on full pay for the summer holidays. me on nothing. union said there was nothing they could do for me.

Novack, I've never ever read a teacher here who says they're brilliant at their job. I've see those who give details of work put in, hours spent doing this that the other, but never being brilliant.

I'm a not bad teacher, and one who puts in the hours. Some days I'm really good. I get excellent exam results, but only from students who put the work in. I have never been able to make silk purse out of a sow's ear, but have always been able to help those who want to improve, to improve.

Nonnomum . That's really crap.

I did this too.

Jealous folk I say

Eases you back in n yes do planning tidy out room etc

It's not illegal

"It's what we all do isn't it? I'm doing it and was actually advised by our business manager to come back 4 days before the hols to ensure that the person covering me also gets paid for the hols."

That business manager should be sacked

This is why people get pissed off and feel (correctly in some instances, such as this one) that they are having the piss taken out of them.

Playing the system to milk as much public money as possible for personal gain and no benefit to the public is appalling.

I am no Novack, I'm the wife, daughter and granddaughter of proud public servants. I support decent pay and conditions for the people who run the country. I have worked as a public and civil servant myself (although not now) and was proud to do so.

But this kind of thing really boils my piss.

Do you think for a minute that a business manager in a private company would give this advice to staff, knowing the company would have to pay for two sets of six week holidays?

You can bet your arse they wouldn't, and they would do their damnedest to make sure the arrangements put in place did not mean they had to pay out from company money for zero company benefit.

But somehow it's fine to do that with public money - because "fuck it, it's just there to be had."

But that money belongs to all of us. Not in a "my taxes pay for this, that, blah, blah" way. But in a "this is a shared resource we all benefit from".

Pulling strokes like this to make sure the highest number of your individual staff are getting paid holiday is not treating our shared resources with anything like the respect they deserve.

It's the same mentality as MPs' expenses. Being able to claim for the costs of setting up a second home near parliament (reasonable) led to a culture of some feeling that it wasn't quite enough to take what was fair if you could switch things around to take more.

Within the letter of the rules, but still practises (getting the mortgage paid on your constituency home where your family was resident and had been before you were an MP) that were clearly dishonest and wasteful of public money.

And then the response was such that now plenty of people think our public representatives shouldn't be paid at all, or have their pensions decimated.

The culture of honest public service is being damaged (both deliberately and through greed and self-interest) and it makes it very hard to argue that the public sector is efficient and worth preserving.

AThingInYourLife - you are WRONG. Teachers are paid only for the 195 days as mentioned above. For the sake of ease, this is split over 12 months. People sound 'ridiculous' in your view but you are the uninformed one!

As for the training days (Noveck et al) - these were originally called Baker Days. At the end of the 80s, Kenneth Baker took 5 days from the teachers' UNPAID school holidays and tacked them onto their 190 days per year. So, inconvenient or not, it is what it is. Can you imagine going into work on Monday and your boss telling you that you will have to give up 5 days of your holiday to come in for training UNPAID? That's what happened to teachers.

As for the inevitable long holiday argument, this will never change. Teachers are paid for 195 days (only split over 12 months for ease) so the government would have to drastically look at raising teachers' salaries to reflect the increase in teaching days.

I'm not wrong.

The 195 day argument can be applied to any salaried worker, it will just be a far higher number of days for people who aren't teachers.

Teachers had long holidays before the 195 day rule came into being.

Did they have their salaries cut by the number of extra holidays they get above the average when they stopped being paid for holidays?

Or is it just an administrative convenience to talk about in terms of 195 paid days?

If it was the case that teacher's holidays were entirely unpaid (as they are for supply teachers), why would the date of return from maternity leave make any difference to when you started getting your salary again?

"TartyMcFarty Fri 08-Jun-12 19:04:33

In any other job you can add any accrued holiday onto the end of mat leave. Teachers just lose it, so why not take whatever you're entitled to?"

That seems to be the crux of it to me - why should teachers lose all the holiday that others are entitled to get? And since they do, why shouldn't they get a (smaller) different perk?

What holidays do teachers "lose"?

Isn't only having to work 195 days per year enough of a perk?

well in my job I take a year's leave then return and have all my holidays to take
I don't think that applies to teachers

and yes, I too am annoyed by the number of "you et long holidays" posts. Presumably the school hols comes as a surprise to very few people
No one ever berates people who get private healthcare or company cars in the same way

I always saw this as a clever 'bonus' by the schools to get the teachers back when they want them, ie September.

A couple of teacher friends would've gone back in oct/nov if they'd taken a full year (a planning/continuity nightmare for the the schools) but actually did the 'week in July/back properly in September' thing to take advantage of 5 weeks paid holiday.

Everyone won, what's the problem?

I work private sector, get nothing more than minimum on maternity, but don't see the issue here...

"well in my job I take a year's leave then return and have all my holidays to take. I don't think that applies to teachers"

Of course not, because teachers don't get discretionary holidays.

But they're not "losing out" on anything, are they?

The long holidays are part of the package, as is the complete lack of flexibility in when you can take them.

"I always saw this as a clever 'bonus' by the schools to get the teachers back when they want them, ie September."

Hmmm, interesting.

I know it's certainly something that school management plan around because they expect it, but it's not without its drawbacks.

And it certainly doesn't excuse sharp practises being encouraged to waste public money paying two teachers for the summer holidays.

"Anyone who goes into teaching for the holidays obviously has no idea what modern teaching is about. "

If you replace "modern teaching" with "the messed up English educational system and its damaging focus on pointless paperwork" then I'll agree with you.

The hours that the teachers on MN are reportedly doing are completely crazy, and I worry about the future of a profession where people are being pushed into doing longer and longer hours in pursuit of largely political goals that are not improving educational standards.

6 weeks off in summer should be mostly 6 weeks off. If teachers are having to spend a significant portion of that time preparing for the following term, there's something not quite right.

Also, 6 weeks is poxy short. Make it 8.

Well, this has gone way off my original topic and turned into another teacher-bashing thread .

But they're not "losing out" on anything, are they? The long holidays are part of the package, as is the complete lack of flexibility in when you can take them.

But you can't control when you have a baby (or not always, not down to the exact week), so both my colleague and I would have had to have 6 weeks without any pay at all simply because of the dates of hard/impossible to control/alter events such as babies' births and school holidays respectively.

In my case, I am the bread-winner so it was impossible for my family to face this situation for 6 weeks when it was easily avoided by my returning to work before the holiday began. And no, I could not have returned earlier as my baby would then have been less than 4 months old and I/he were not ready.

Nonnomum that is what I meant. The short term contract maternity cover. I am sure it happened to somebody I knew. It does seem very unfair.