To be shocked at the amount of holiday pay I have received?

[moneyquestions2405]

Hello, I posted before regarding maternity leave and whether to take my holiday pay as a lump sum or whether to return to payroll. I am a primary teacher.

I decided to return to payroll, and I have 35 days accrued. I have attached the letter that I signed stating I have 35 days.

I’ve just got my payslip through today, and it’s for £336?

I was expecting it to be a lot more than that, I was thinking it would be almost back to my original wages before coming off on maternity leave?

Will I be getting £336 for months now, or will that be it?? Bit confused here!

It says Hourly Rate £22.18, and then 35 hours.
But 22.18 x 35 is 776.

My approximate figures would be...
say I do 6 hours at day at £22= £132.
£132 x 35 days I have accrued= £4620.
Or have I misunderstood how holiday pay works?

I will attach the payslip too. Can anyone shed any light on this please?

Thank you.

Pay slip attached

Final pay

So you’re off work at the moment, but you’re using up annual leave? Yeah, I would’ve assumed you’d get a “normal” paycheque?

Oh that’s weird. Should this be a weekly payslip?

Yep, exactly that. I’m on maternity leave but using my accrued annual leave. I tell you, to say I was shocked when I opened the payslip is an understatement! I think they’ve left a number out of the total!!😩

And I went to great lengths to email Hr to find out the best possible leave I could take. Might as well not have bothered if it was only going to be pittance anyway.

Oooohhh, please God let it be a weekly payslip!!!!🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼

I thought annual leave worked differently in teaching? In that you can't choose when to take it like in other jobs, so on maternity leave you can either be lucky or unlucky, depending on when your baby is born. I really didn't know you could 'accrue ' leave.

But they’ve sent me a letter saying I have accrued 35 days? And they said I could either take all my pay as a lump sum, or return to payroll and take it monthly until it was used up. I was just expecting it to be far more.

Its clearly wrong. Get on the phone to them!

Or are you not in England? I'm assuming you're in the UK but perhaps it works differently in Wales, Scotland etc?

Pay is usually a month in arrears, so if you return to payroll on 30th September and physically return to work on 3rd December, then you are using annual leave in October and November so it's your pay at the end of those months that I'd expect to be "normal". Your September pay slip will just be your maternity pay for September so is still low. Can't hurt to double check with payroll though to be sure that's how yours works.

Ahhh. So if I wait until October, it’ll have gone up to normal amounts? Phew. I’m in Scotland.

I assume you've accrued leave as the school holidays that you would have been off you were still on maternity leave. Sounds like it is probably a weekly pay slip, very strange though, definitely phone them asap!

That's what I'd expect anyway (please note I am in England and not in teaching - just my experience with other companies/industries).

Yes there is a number to phone, I’ll give them a wee call to check.

Just wanted to see if I was misunderstanding it before I made a fool out of myself!

I read it as you will get your normal pay from 30th September - so presumably it will be in your October salary.

Is it only me who thinks it's crazy that you get holiday pay/time in lieu, when you're off anyway?!

Teachers are only paid for a statutory minimum number of holidays. I don’t know any teachers who were paid for holidays on maternity leave.

In England, teachers don’t get holiday pay as far as I know! I always thought we were paid for 195 days split over 12 months. (I’m also primary)

Unless you work for an academy and are not paid under the “burgundy book”

On the topic of mat leave - if you are due in the school holidays, you can start your mat leave on the day after baby is born rather than last day of term/first day of hols. Lots of my teacher friends were unaware of this and lost out!
(put due date down initially then change it once baby arrives)

That's September's wage slip. If you only returned on 30th September you won't get a full wage because you haven't 'worked' a full month. In October you will have 'worked' a full month and have been on annual leave for all of it, so you will have a full month's wage.

As a few people have said, the letter states you return to payroll on 30th September to start using up your annual leave. At the moment you're still on maternity.

I would ask HR or Payroll to clarify the breakdown. Explain that you were told you had accrued 35 days but that you're payslip seems to state 35 hours and that you don't understand their calculation and ask them to explain it. I find softly softly approach works best in these situations....especially when you don't know the answer and want their help.

When I was paid my holiday pay as a lump sum my hourly rate was £15 and I had accrued 38 days and was paid over £4k gross.

Aaahhhhh, phew, that makes sense now actually. So it’s only a small
amount because there’s only a few days I ‘worked’ in September.

Jeeepers, made me
Panic there!!

Still will give them a call to clarify though. Thank you all for your help.

Surely the issue is simply that somebody forgot to change the box next to the 35 from hours to days? So instead of 35 days holiday they've paid 35 hours?

@AnoukSpirit

That’s a good point, but even so...

£22.18 x 35 = 776, so it’s still wrong.

Teachers do get holiday pay (as everyone does) but for the statutory minimum over the year. As teacher’s actual holidays are greater than this, there are only very rare cases in which someone would accrue leave, as usually they would have already taken/have left to take more than that over the course of their year. Teachers usually return to work before a holiday and leave after one so no leave is accrued (however they get the benefit of a loner maternity leave broken up by just a short period of work). Only if someone is not returning and had been off for a whole year might they accrue any holiday pay.