Why is there such a huge discrepancy between the school day/school hols and the majority of workplaces

[Lifeisbeaut]

Just returning to work after a career break and trying to work out the logistics of school pick ups, how to manage school holidays whilst minimising the children being passed from pillar to post without routine. It’s not manageable or affordable.
I wish more employers offered term time only or proper part time options. I feel like what’s the point in going back to work when I will barely see my children and I’m barely bringing much more money in. Whoever said we could have it all was lying (unless I am missing something?)

I think the idea of temps being able to cover is hugely unrealistic. The amount of time and effort that goes in to getting people up to speed isn’t doable (and I mean effective in the job, not just present), and companies can’t be expected to shell out for two people to be working for a proper handover period

As you don't seem to be able to see it, the people that are picking up the slack and working the hours that parents (in this case you) don't want to work are non parents.
I kind of think that's obvious School hours/term time/part time hours don't tend to appeal so much to people that don't have caring responsibilities for young children either, as the pay is so much lower.
As an example at my children's school, many of the TAs are parents of younger children and finish work at 3. The staff that run the after school club til 6pm are 1 with no children, 1 with teen/adult children, and 1 with a primary age child who comes with her.
At the nursery, several staff with school age children work part time/school hours, so staff bring children with them, staff with no children or older children tend to want full time jobs.

Unfortunately (most) workplaces don't operate on what's fair for working parents, they operate on what they can get away with to meet their needs. If enough people can work full time/all year round, which the child free usually can, then few commercially minded employers are going to offer term time only working.

I don't think the responsiblity for this lies with employers so much as the state, in Canada many schools stay open during the holidays to provide holiday clubs for working parents, they could do similar here (for a fee) as it is yes there are holiday clubs but they are oversubscribed if every school did it and it was perhaps government subsidised life may be easier.

I said temps could work for some jobs not all. Don't get why people are being hard of understanding about that

YABVU. Business is there to make money and service clients, not support your decision to reproduce and work round your childcare problems.

Temps won't work for many professional level jobs because they, like other professionals, usually want and need stable work.

A wage used to cover, rent food clothing for a family of four.
Now people get paid so little both parents work, and someone else gets paid to raise your child.....

Smoggle

Of course its obvious, yet you don't seem to see that non parents may not want to stay to till 6, just because you want to work late .

Even with your anecdotal evidence about who stays behind in your school, you are overlooking that you have already stated that you would want you children fed before coming home. Where do these workers come from?

I'm really not following you Boney - lots of jobs finish at 6, not everyone wants to work til 6 so presumably they're not going to be applying for jobs that work til 6. Lots of jobs cover weekends, or shift rotas, night shifts - not everyone wants those jobs either.
Feeding children - my anecdotal evidence is childcare staff provide tea in settings open til 6.

This idea of an "army of temps" filling is is pure pie in the sky.

1. What do you expect them to do for work when the parents are doing their half of the job then? Given all parents are going to want approximately the same time off as each other.

1. Most of the jobs where a temp can just magically drop in are the very same lower paid, lower skilled roles that pp are saying parents don't want to do/are over-qualified for.

It's not like you can just get a temp in to cover for a lead architect on a big build project; or step straight into the shoes of a graphic designer who has been working with a client on their global design project from day 1.

Smoggle

By your own experience there are only three people in your school that do the ours from 3 - 6. these are people that are already in the school, the rest are either still working or have gone home.

For your proposal to work 100% of the time you would be looking for more people to come in for 3 hours each day, and possibly for a hour in the morning. These people are not going to be easy to find.

I don't want to work evenings, but I still go to pubs and restaurants in the evening when other people have to work.
I don't want to work Saturdays, but I still go swimming or shopping on a Saturday when other people are working.
I don't want to work at 6.30am, but I still book my Tesco delivery for first thing when someone else is having to work.

Boney, what makes you think it would be hard to fill those roles? Most of the schools local to me run breakfast and after school clubs, there's a holiday club that runs full days, and several day nurseries open from 7.30am-6pm.

Smoggle

What you are talking about are full time jobs,
Your breakfast and afterschool clubs are run by people that are already in the school and the same with the day nurseries.

Yes some are run on shift patterns, but those patterns are more than three hours long.

I couldn't run my business if people only worked term time and school hours. The business world doesn't run to a school timetable.

A wage used to cover, rent food clothing for a family of four.
Now people get paid so little both parents work, and someone else gets paid to raise your child....

FFS, using childcare is not 'someone else raising your child' and it's utter balls that one wage used to cover everything for a great number of people. Plenty of couples have had both people working for years, except that due to repressive patriarchy women were not allowed to train for and perform in a number of professions. Who wants to go back to that shit?

Right so uni students looking for summer jobs no longer exist, it wouldn't be at all possible for some retail workers to have unpaid time off in the holidays covered by temps

And again, there are many, many jobs that uni student or a temp cannot just step in and do. Business functions to fulfil the need of its service users, often year round and full-time, not to support a people's decision to reproduce and spend more time with their crotch fruit.

Boney, sorry are you saying they'd be better as full time jobs or not? They could easily be 7.30-4.30 or 11.30-6 type jobs for example. The same people working as TAs, running extra-curricular clubs, lunch time supervisors, after school club workers. Might even suit working parents better than 9-5 jobs.

There are plenty of jobs that could be done by a temp. It's not a universal solution by any stretch of the imagination but it is something that could be done.

Anecdotally I've had plenty of colleagues talk about how there used to be student temps in summer to allow for more people in general on leave but management got out of the habit of doing it.

Right so uni students looking for summer jobs no longer exist, it wouldn't be at all possible for some retail workers to have unpaid time off in the holidays covered by temps

The thing is, businesses would always go for the people who would work through the entire year. Are you happy for your supermarket shop to go up to pay for the training of half the staff every year, for your checkout time to be slower because the staff member is new? In Scotland, every member of staff must go through a mandatory 2 hour licencing course, that could be 40 hours wasted per year, just for that. Even more if you need to employ people at Christmas too.

I’d like to see government step in and provide something akin to Sweden’s childcare model. Means tested, wraparound care would certainly help many parents into work. Ideally alongside elderly care (not nursing care obviously) so children and adults alike can experience more of a ‘village’ nurturing environment rather than being shut away (yes I do know this is cloud cuckoo land I’m flying around in!)

It’s a wider issue than just childcare.
We’re at a point where lots of jobs will be automated in the next couple of decades; on a societal level a universal income supplemented with fewer working hours would be more fair to everyone.

In the meantime, office based employers could easily reduce working hours so employees work more efficiently eg make a six hour day with no hour long lunch break, in order to allow people to share desks working over two shifts, 9am-3pm and 3pm-9pm. In companies with a global presence this would be more efficient. Or allow more working from home now it’s viable with online meetings etc, and save huge amounts of money on office space which could be converted to affordable housing (shortages of fuel will make this necessary soon enough anyway.)

As a director of a small tech company I always try and facilitate working hours requests for parents because ultimately, I want good employees too stay and the sector we’re in allows for this (who cares if code or a project progress report is written at home, or at 9pm? No one, as long as the work is delivered on time.) Our culture of work long hours, visible to an entire office is ridiculous and unsustainable.

smoggle - it is actually difficult to staff - particularly morning club (that's one of my jobs as school admin, to recruit and staff these clubs) There are a couple of reasons for this -

its an hour a day before school, the person has to be trained to an adequate standard (safeguarding, first aid, childcare, food handling) but not be interested in working during school hours but be interested in working when their own child is probably being got ready for school. The obvious thing is to extend TA hours, but TAs are about supporting education and often good TAs have lots of skills and don't want to do childcare at that time of day as they have their own children.

The school's purpose is to educate children and so raising education standards always has to be the schools focus. Things like wraparound care can be a distraction from this focus. Ofsted, governors are looking at the quality of the education you provide. the government gives you money to educate children.

Its not as profitable as you think because of the costs and space needed and the knock on things like caretaker hours, cleaning contracts, when repairs can be carried out etc

There isn't the demand. I mean, obviously there is demand but its not as consistent as people think. Lots of people work condensed hours, granny drops off on a Thursday, their friend helps on a Monday, dad get the later train 2 days a week etc - so we find that we are oversubscribed midweek but cant fill the places on a Monday and Friday. Its the same in the holidays - everyone wants holiday care, but not all at the same time as they do have annual leave and fancy tennis club for the first week. We have more success only proving care one week of Easter rather than 2 as what happens is you get, say 30 children, spread 15 each week instead of all 30 in one week. But then that's difficult to staff as its not really a job is it - half the school holidays.

So in summary, I actually agree with you that decent childcare is possible because that's what we have going where I work - sort of - but I think the current set up with education makes childcare hard as schools aren't funded to provide childcare and it is a distraction from their purpose and the school day is the middle of the working day really. It must be possible but there needs to be a big shift in political will to actually structure education and childcare and look at funding.

I don't think a slightly slower person on the checkout is the end of the world, they are only on minimum wage. There are always new staff in these jobs. I also don't think a bit of training is the end of the world.

The obvious thing is to extend TA hours

TA support is now disappearing into history, thanks to Tory cuts.