AIBU not to go to work during the holiday (teacher)?

[Namechange7000]

I'm a teacher in a village primary school in England but I'm not originally from the UK. Since arriving in England I've only worked as a teacher and I can't tell if my work's expectations are normal for here or not.

We have today and tomorrow as inset days and the children come back to school on Wednesday. Before the summer break the head teacher told us that we couldn’t afford cleaners over the break and that there wouldn't be much time for classroom setup on the inset days and hinted that we should come to work during the break to do it. But by the time the email was sent (end of June) I had already booked my flights to spend the entire break in Australia. My parents live in Sydney and we haven't seen them since before covid so I really wanted my dc to spend some time with them and obviously I wanted to see them too. We had a lovely break and got back to England on Friday so I'd have time to recover from jetlag and be ready to start work today. We got the inset schedule emailed to us on Sunday and there is literally no time scheduled for classroom set up and no planning time. We have back-to-back meetings from 8.30 - 17.00 with an hour for lunch both days but actually today's lunch break was only 40 minutes because the meeting ran late. I had to leave by 17.30 to collect my dc but even if I didn't, the school building is only open until 18.00.

At 17.00 this evening I was in my classroom frantically trying to sort things out. I've moved year groups so I had to move classrooms and there was a summer camp using my new classroom for a month. The previous teacher had to shove all of the teaching materials, toys etc into the cupboards before the break to prevent the summer camp from using them. My manager came into the room this evening and commented on how messy and not ready it is (the furniture is all over the room wherever the summer camp left it, no displays backing paper up, no interactive learning wall displays, no materials out, no book corner set up, no role play area set up, I haven't put the children's names on their pegs, trays, exercise books etc). I explained that I haven't had time to do it but that I'd stay as late as I could and do as much as possible before leaving. She reminded me that we were warned that there wouldn't be time to do it during inset. I explained that I had already booked our flights to Australia before that email was sent and that we couldn't reschedule them that late even if we wanted to. She then said that I should keep in mind that it was paid holiday time and that it is my responsibility to ensure that the classroom is ready before the children arrive on Wednesday. There is no way I can possibly get the classroom ready to the expected standard in time because the building is not open long enough. I will go in at 7.30 to do an hour before inset tomorrow and Wednesday and dh has managed to rearrange his work hours for tomorrow so I can stay until 18:00 and I'll work through my lunch break but that’s still only 4 hours and it’s much, much too much work to do in that time. For context, the example classroom we were all taken to look at as part of the training today took the teacher 6 full days to clean and set up during the break and that wasn't finished. We also only have 1 printer and 1 laminator in the school so there are long waits to get access to them.

I am so stressed and I feel like I’m already failing my class and my own dc. I’m already behind and overwhelmed even though it’s the first day of term. I had a panic attack this evening. I feel like this is my fault for not knowing that I was supposed to work for a week during the holiday but no one told me until it was way too late. Is it common practice here to work during your holiday if it is a paid holiday? I have a salary which is paid in equal instalments throughout the year so I was fully paid for August even though I didn’t work a single day. We have similar arrangements in Australia but my schools there always gave us time to do the admin and class setup before the children arrived (and didn’t have such specific requirements regarding classroom setup). WIBU to go on holiday and not go to work to clean and set up my classroom during the break?

I'm tempted to try secondary!

@Namechange7000 Same sort of attitude there too in my experience. No end to the demands. Not worth the money for the lack of a life outside the job.

They arent paid holidays. How many times?
They are paid for term time?
Do you spend several days in your work not getting paid?

The comments on this thread show what is wrong with the expectations of the teaching profession and why we are leaving.

OP try and fit your prep into the last few weeks of the summer and what you can over inset. I don't go in over the summer apart from results days. We don't get paid for the holidays, we get paid for the days we work (195) but distributed over 12 months.

@Namechange7000

Is this your first year teaching? Surely you knew before booking your tix that you’d have to set up your room before school started.

I’m not criticising — my mum was a teacher & I would help her every year set up her room. It’s a gigantic job. I understand that you miss your family, but also think you could’ve planned this when you made the reservations.

I hope your visit was nice and that you get to see your family again quite soon. Australia is so very far away.

I don't know any who set up classrooms over the holidays. We may do some development work at home over the holidays but that and inset days are all we are due to do.We are not replacement cleaners by the way.
They also cannot.tell you how you will spend your leave as you have already earned the paid holiday.
Where are your unions? You are being imposed upon.

FYI, If you have QTS and a masters in Maths and Physics, secondary schools will be biting your hand off to hire you.

OP, I think you’re wrong about directed time. It will certainly include normal term time days and inset days, but there will be a big chunk leftover. That counts for e.g. parents evenings, staff meetings, open days and pretty much anything else required to do your job. Some of which can be done flexibly, of course, but it still needs to be done.

Given that you couldn’t have set up at the end of last term because of their late decision making and poor planning, I would have expected some time to do things during the inset days, but your headteacher is not wrong to say that you do need to do it at some point and to expect that at some point in the past six weeks you might have come in. Since you weren’t able to, I would expect you to be working longer than normal days this week to make up for that.

Most primary school staff do go in during the holidays to set up class.
Some of pp saying books should have been labelled is great if the books are in school before they break up , often they aren't.
Stuff things in drawers /cupboards and concentrate on putting up some display paper, to add kids work as weeks go on. Set out your tables and if you need to spray/wipe shelves however it is NOT your job to clean your classroom, tidy yes, clean no.
Peg labels - ask the kids to vote on style - if you are allowed to design them. Make it a maths activity. I bought a laminator, paper trimmer etc for home so I could do stuff for displays at home - much easier, less hassle.
Good luck x

OP my sister is a primary school teacher in Oz (in a naice school) and has always gone in on the hols for a couple of days to get things sorted, as have most of her colleagues and friends. Am curious that you’ve never seen this before….quite naive….am also amazed that you & your children can recover from Aussie jet lag in a weekend!

You should not be expected to work during the summer holidays to prepare that room.
If they want that room prepared they should have allowed time on the inset day so it is on them and they have the audacity to try to shame you?
I no longer work in the UK and in the US if I go in. to prep my room, I get paid to do it so I guess that is my expectation now, no one does unpaid overtime here rightly so, the job does not pay enough for you to be working through holiday time.

The kids will survive with the room not fully ready so long as you are rested and not stressed out.

Reading this thread seeing how normal it is for people to come in during their holiday time is really awful no wonder people are leaving teaching. Thank goodness we have a strong union over here and we stick to our 30 hours work per week- if we run a club, we get paid, if we stay after school to teach extra we get paid and it SHOULD be that way too. In no other profession do people just do unpaid overtime- the culture needs to change over there if teachers are to be retianed. I am a much happier teacher now being treated better and not working the 50 hours a week I was expected to put in in the UK as was the culture over there for half the money as well. Why should teachers go in on their holidays to prepare classrooms? Why not clear the inset day for that to happen? That is what happens where I work now and it makes for much better teacher retention.We also get an afternoon every few weeks just to work on any prep we need to do, extra prep time on top of our daily 90 minute prep time. Cannot go back to the British work you to a health problem style for teachers, it was awful 15 years ago and I am sure it is even worse now.

I’m a teacher and I’ve been a city professional. My contract for working in my previous career made it very clear I was expected to work additional hours for no over-time. My holidays were 5 weeks and the bank holidays. My pay was however 3x my teaching salary.

I do plan and work on my weekends and some holidays. I don’t particularly want to and I don’t think it’s fair. I do it because id rather be prepared than wing it, I’m an ECT now. Once my ECT is complete I will be saying no a heck of a lot more. Considering how hard it is to find teachers in my specialism I doubt I will get any comeback from SLT if I don’t.

once my children have left education in about 10 years time I will be leaving the sector too.

teachers are professionals who need to be paid accordingly. But with that comes the expectation you’d have to work more in school holidays. Whilst pay is low, and once I’m through my ECT years I will be working my contracted hours and that’s it!

regards class displays, current trend is for minimal displays as it’s too ‘noisy’ and doesn’t create a positive learning environment. Worth keeping in your back pocket if anyone has a dig.

I'm surrounded by teachers in my social circle and my ex husband is one. It's entirely normal to go in and set the classroom up. You've had 6/7 weeks.

It's not entirely normal, it's an unreasonable expectation that you need to say no to so it starts being treated like the unpaid overtime that it is, it is the equivalent of being asked to work during your holiday. Teachers get paid less than many other degree-level professions that require post-degree qualifications because of the longer holidays I suspect.

I never go in during the holidays. I do have to be very organised in the last week of the summer
term and I have always worked in schools where there is some time for setting up on the INSET days. Everyone needs that time to sort things out as you don’t necessarily get your timetable, class lists or know what room you are in until you return. A reasonable head would make sure some time was provided? There are a lot of teachers who do loads in the holidays though.

They're not paid holidays.

I didn't lift a finger for work over the holidays bar the odd email to students who had a query.

I didn't get my timetable until halfway through the day yesterday. As is usual on INSET days, there was zero time given to teachers to actually prepare anything.

So I spent some time last night trying to figure out our clunky new system to see class lists, make a room layout and start getting my seating plans sorted.

I spent my evening reading the safeguarding paperwork and policies that we need to read every year, but don't get access to until the actual training day, and signed the paperwork that went along with it.

I spent time helping my manager figure out what we are actually all doing and pity the poor guy, who had longer meetings than us and is now having to rewrite the curriculum plans because our timetables are a mess as usual.

With and hour's break that was mainly commuting home and making food, I worked 8 until 10pm solid (the lunch was a 10min sit-down between back-to-back meetings to wolf down some food, so I guess that counts?)

Our room prep time is today between 3.30 and 4pm - no one will get anything done as there are simply not enough staplers going around, let alone anything else, so guess who will be working late again and then get home to do more paperwork that no time was allocated to, but that definitely has a deadline.

I had a shit tonne of work to do before summer to get "September ready" but more than half of my allocated time went to other things that also had to be done at the same time (like cover, meetings, trips, assemblies with my form).

So no, during the holidays I vote with my feet.

I advise you to keep a time plan from now on. List the time you have been allocated to get things done, the overtime you have done and exactly what it went to. Whip it out if anyone complains that you haven't done enough and ask them how much they think is reasonable. Because that is what your contract says, reasonable overtime.

People know I keep my paperwork this tight, so senior leaders generally leave me alone. But you do have to bite back.

Right or wrong I've been teaching 20 years and always go in a couple days the week before the children come back in September to sort my classroom out.....more if I'd moved room...last time took me four full days 8-6 ..a coup,e of the TAs helped when they could too.

You're getting a rough time here OP. I'll just point out - teachers are paid across the full year but are not actually paid for all the holidays. The pay is just spread out throughout the year. A fact that's constantly ignored. - but OP there is an expectation that you use some time in summer to set up. A day or two is reasonable.

Maybe for primary, if you gave no other plans, but no one really should be expected to work in the holidays. The school should have employed others to clean. I haven't been to school yet since 21st July. Going in today. I am secondary but there should be no expectation at all.

I am a teacher. It is poor planning from slt to not leave some time for personal prep. In my school we had two mornings of meetings and two afternoons of prep. You should not be dealing with such major tidying up using the classroom as a summer camp should not mean that the class is left on a state. Things like tidying up and putting up backing paper are not really the teachers job but ate inevitably done by teachers. Cleaning definitely isn't. I think in primary there is perhaps more expectation that teachers will set up their rooms and some staff in my school will do one day in the hols getting organised. I did quite a few hours working at home over three or four days but it should be a choice. You are not paid for your holiday. Your term time salary is spread out over the whole year.

100% this, OP. The school is setting you up to fail. There you are, trying to work through lunches, after school, before school, and they just criticise you. They've given you inadequate, support, help, time or equipment to prep for/do the job you've been hired to do. I'm not surprised you had a panic attack IMO.

too late now op
just do the your best.
know it for next year,
when you book next year's leave, leave the last week for setting up
i am surprised no one told you before

I’m a secondary school teacher.

I choose to go in during the summer to lesson plan and sort my room out as I find it easier to do when there are less people in.

My colleague stays much later than normal leading up to the holidays so she can have a proper break and not have to worry over the summer.

I do think it is the done thing to go in during the summer to get everything ready.

It annoys me that there isn’t a set day for this as the INSET days are usually too busy to do anything like this.

plus it was used as summer school?
so not much you could do anyway? apart from laminating in advance