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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think teachers' holidays...

89 replies

HenriettaPootel · 12/08/2012 11:00

...are not quite all they're cracked up to be?

So, I'm starting to plan holidays for next summer. DH teaches at a private school and breaks up in early July. DS1 is at a state primary school and breaks up on the 24th July. We are planning a week's family holiday right at the start of the holidays, w/c Sat 27 July. The in-laws have also asked us to go for a week with them, to a house in the UK also starting on a Saturday. Now, we can't go Sat 3 August because we'll be travelling home from our family holiday in France. We can't go Sat 10 August because DH needs to be in school for the A level results. We can't go Sat 17 August because DH needs to be in school for the GCSE results. And we can't go Sat 23 August because, although DS is still on holiday, DH goes back to school on the 29th. Oh, and we can't go in summer half term because DH has to accompany a school trip abroad.

Now, before I get completely flamed, I know that it's wonderful to have DH at home for so long, and I'm not ungrateful for that. However, it does seem a bit ridiculous that with a husband who's a teacher, we can't basically take more than one week-long holiday (unless we go in Easter/October, when it will be a bit chilly for a beach holiday in Wales!). I know I'm probably being a bit U, but I do think that when people say 'teachers can't complain about their pay, they get those wonderful long holidays', they don't quite realise how many restrictions there are.

OP posts:

Alibabaandthe40nappies · 12/08/2012 16:01

OP my DH is self-employed, so when we take holiday he doesn't earn. Do I moan about it? No - because we knew what the situation would be when we embarked on this route.

It does make me laugh when teachers think that they have such an awful deal in regards to pay, when there are many jobs that need a similar amount of training that pay less and have less holidays and no pension.

SoleSource · 12/08/2012 16:03

Yabu.

FunnyLittleFrog · 12/08/2012 16:12

One of the massive drawbacks is that due to the restrictions we face (exam results days etc) almost all teachers go away for the first 2 weeks of the summer holidays... leading to everywhere being full of bloody teachers.

It's my holiday - I wanted to get away from them..!

I once bumped into a colleague on the same Spanish beach!

captainhastings · 12/08/2012 16:18

I don't think I have it harder than most other professions. The financial rewards are less and there are no bonuses, stays in company houses , discounts etc but I have a job that brings me immense joy, I have long holidays and I have the flexibility to arrive at 8am and leave at 4pm, not every day but it can be done.

IOutrunBoltInMySpareTime · 12/08/2012 16:19

You could go straight from France to your mum's
You could visit relatives without DH, or get him to join you later/leave earlier.
You could go away October half term.
Sorry, but I'm low on sympathy for your problems.
I work in a day nursery PT0.6, I get 6 days holiday a year. We have 1 week away together, and use the rest of our annual leave to cover school holidays.

IOutrunBoltInMySpareTime · 12/08/2012 16:22

Sorry, your in-laws, not your mum's

captainhastings · 12/08/2012 16:22

I often go away without by husband and he joins us later on .

Original poster

HenriettaPootel · 12/08/2012 16:37

To answer some of the points. Re alternative jobs - no, he couldn't walk into another higher paying job now, but when he entered the profession most of our friends with similar qualifications (v good Oxbridge degree) became bankers, lawyers, corporate high fliers etc. I'm not saying DH would ever have earned his millions in private equity, but I think he could realistically have earned maybe double what he does now or a bit more as a lawyer or some such. In theory he has better job security than his friends, but all of them are still in the same or equivalent jobs as when they started out, so it hasn't really made a difference in practice. And wrt the shorter hours, I would point out that DH works a full day six day week, not home until about 4pm on a Saturday, so we don't get to do that much on term time weekends either.

However, MN has spoken. I guess IABU. The benefits do outweigh the annoyances. And I need to be a bit more creative about how we structure our holidays. (No way on earth we'd get ILs in a tent, though .)

OP posts:

Molehillmountain · 12/08/2012 16:43

Yabu. My dh is a secondary school teacher so has two weeks of his holidays where he is in school with no flexibility for three days of each of those weeks because of a level results . But we go away the first two weeks and he is around for the rest of the time or at least can be even if he works. I think there are many challenges involved with teaching but the holidays are absolutely an amazing feature.

ShellyBoobs · 12/08/2012 17:01

The financial rewards are less and there are no bonuses, stays in company houses , discounts etc..

Yes, cos everybody outside of teaching gets bonuses and stays in company houses (whatever that may mean).

And OP, YAB fucking U.

ilovesooty · 12/08/2012 17:12

The financial rewards are less and there are no bonuses, stays in company houses , discounts etc

I don't think anyone in my company gets anything like these - not even the Executive Directors.

butisthismyname · 12/08/2012 17:16

I work in the charity sector, dh in the public, we work betwen us around 90 hours a week and can't afford one holiday (had a shitty week away paid by my mum in half term..long story) No 'bonuses', no 'discounts', no childcare. Laugh a minute not being a teacher.

ilovesooty · 12/08/2012 17:20

butisthismyname I work in the charity sector too.

captainhastings · 12/08/2012 17:30

I was comparing my life as a teacher to life before. Someone said that most teachers could not have a life outside of teaching , I was making the point that at least some of us could.

But despite all of the former bonuses, for me it could not compete with the non material bonuses of teaching .

ilovesooty · 12/08/2012 17:37

I think it's great you feel lkie that captain

For the first 14 years of my career I couldn't have imagined doing anything else. My ex wasn't a teacher but we were lucky in that he was able to take 3 weeks off every summer. I get 32 days plus BH now, plus the odd half day of TOIL and I think that's great.

captainhastings · 12/08/2012 17:41

I have been teaching for about ten years and still feel that way . I have quite a low boredom threshold and suspect I have at most five or six years in teaching. I would like to do something else once I reach my fifties.

captainhastings · 12/08/2012 17:43

Shellybobs I was being vague as I was trying to maintain some privacy . Some companies have properties, holiday homes etc that employees can have access to as part of an incentive scheme.

ILiveInAPineapple · 12/08/2012 18:23

YABU. I teach in a secondary school and will have to be in for results days to advise my students. It's only two days.
The holidays are bloody brilliant. Yes, I have work to do over the holidays, but I do it when I want to! It does even out the 60-70 hour weeks I seem to pull the rest of the year, and I love going to bed at 8pm in the holidays as its a luxury to go to bed before midnight!

I took a pay cut of roughly 60% to go into teaching, and I started on M4, but I HATED my previous job. I know that I am lucky to have been in the situation to afford to do this as many people couldn't have, but I would do it again on a heartbeat evethough I do really miss my Christmas bonus and the rest of my wage!

I have to say that now I have an almost school age DS, the holidays are an even bigger attraction to stay in teaching, as I see him for an hour every night during the week in term time, and one of the weekend days I usually spend markin or planning, so I relish the family time.

Migsy1 · 12/08/2012 18:38

I have just given up another professional career which needed a degree and a masters to become fully trained. I have been self employed for 8 years and so I have not had a paid day's holiday in that time. The recession has affected my industry a lot. I am going to retrain as a teacher and I cannot wait for 13 weeks paid holiday and a pension as well as a decent wage.
UABU.

lancs02 · 12/08/2012 18:42

It is a pain about having to go in for exam results but I do think its hard for those who aren't teacher's to feel any sympathy. My dh is out of house from 6.30 am till 7.30 pm roughly and only get 22 days hiliday per year. Plus we have to avoid one week every month and can't of course go away term time either as we have school age children.
I have also found it hard to go back to work as childcare is so expensive especially during the school holidays. Think I probably need a job in a school.

captainhastings · 12/08/2012 18:45

The holidays are not paid as such , pay is averaged out taking into consideration the holidays.

PartialToACupOfMilo · 12/08/2012 18:48

On a different note, but also confusing: Why is he going in for results on a Saturday? GCSE and A level results come out on Thursdays... and based on 3rd / 4th of the month surely it's 15th and 22nd next year What can he possibly be doing almost a week ahead of when the results are actually published?!

iggi777 · 12/08/2012 19:06

I love that a thread not even started by a teacher becomes yet another excuse to bash them!
WRT to comments about what highly paid jobs could teachers expect if they left teaching, I don't think this is the way they are thinking of it. It's what career could someone of their academic ability (whatever that may be) have chosen to train for if they hadn't wanted to go into teaching.

NPPF · 12/08/2012 19:26

Like what career iggy? Why would graduates retrain to be teachers if teacher's salaries are so rubbish? No one is bashing them here. People are just not accepting that they have a raw deal.

Which graduate careers pay more? Please don't say lawyers and doctors. What about surveyors, occupational therapists, some nurses, acoustic consultants, landscape architects, social workers, professionals in the hotel and catering industry, it goes on and on.

EnglishGirlApproximately · 12/08/2012 19:27

I have seen very little teacher bashing on this thread. The majority of people saying the OP is bu are acknowledging that teaching is an important job with many challenges. However, they have quite rightly pointed out that lack of holidays isn't one of those challenges.

Also, as has already been pointed out, there are many people working in the private sector with good academic ability who don't earn as much as teachers and certainly don't have the same benefits. The fact is that there are nowhere near as many graduate level jobs as there are graduates so there would be a really good chance that had they not chosen teaching, they would be working in a shop, or a call centre alongside thousands of other graduates.

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