To be worn out by the mismatch between annual leave & school provision

[Yellowlegobrick]

25 days. Like most people i get 25 days annual leave.

School holidays plus inset days needs 65 days cover.

There are sod all good options to cover it locally. There'll be a football camp 20 mins away for 3 days 9 - 2.30, a forest school doing an odd week 9-3. The bigger camps are massively oversubscribed, don't run for the whole holiday and you sometimes can't get a place.

Aibu to think there needs to be a formalised, centrally managed system to acknowledge the gap and provide better coverage?

Even if DH take all our annual leave separately, we can't cover it all, especially not when we lose at least a couple of days each per year of annual leave covering days the children are ill.

Its a constant annual stress, i find myself filled with dread when the letter comes from school: end of term, finish after lunch at 1.15.... there goes another half day 🙁

It really is a gap in the market that could/should be utilised. Plenty of university students home for summer would be looking for work like this. There are some options around but definitely not enough to cover the demand.

I hear you. I managed with my DD because I had 3 family members very kindly offer to help but they aren’t in a position to now. It’s down to 1 of them. I can’t even use the summer camps as DS has autism and needs extra support.

Think I’ll be looking at term time working for the next few years if I can get it approved.

YANBU it's so tricky. Better for us now we work from home but the local provision for my old dc was almost non-existent.

It’s always been a nightmare. We have a chart on our wall with it all. Things we do:-

I work part time and have Monday as my day off. There are a lot of bank holidays on a Monday (especially this year and last year) so that “earns” me some extra days.

If we are busy I sometimes work on my day off while the kids are at school and that gets me some more time off.

Taking unpaid parental leave.

Grandparents sometimes come and stay and look after them for a few days.

Swapping with equally desperate friends. (Although taking 3 5 year olds, a 4 year old and a 2 year old to the playground was not my best day ever!)

Dh’s work sometimes lets him work evenings / longer days so he can look after the kids in the daytime. (Although I suspect that the week he looked after then 5 year old dd all day and then worked from 6pm - 1am probably wasn’t his best week ever!)

Kids are older now so occasionally we both work from home and accept that the kids will spend the day attached to screens.

@TileMeSomeMore - I brought my 3 up in the UK so I know how that works . Here we also have mid-term breaks and other holidays at Christmas and spring. My DDIL looks after her own 3 and nannies her sisters two (sis is an OBGYN) and is tearing her hair out despite being a SAHM.

There is parental leave I guess. We have taken that some years in a block of 3-4 weeks over summer.

There are camps but they can be expensive. Our eldest is off to a drama one in October and it was about £360 for the week even after using tax free childcare. I’m sure she will have an awesome time but for two of them it would be a bit cheaper to just have a week unpaid.

I feel your pain OP. We have plenty of clubs (some run by local council) here, which would be fine for primary age, but they all run 9-3pm which is no use if you work 9-5pm. There doesn't seem to be anything on for secondary, so it's a long time to be left home alone for the 4-5 weeks we can't cover with annual leave.

Why aren't school hours closer to 9-5? 8:45 to 5:15 perhaps, with more free play time and sports/activities rather than longer days of study. Wouldn't that make more sense for everyone...

I agree! It's awful. I only have 1 child, and he has an 8 week summer holiday, and long Christmas and Easter holidays. DH and I both work full-time and we have limited family in close proximity. It's so hard. For the summer holidays, I have to have a spreadsheet to show who has DS on which days. We use our leave separately- apart from the family holiday, and use holiday clubs. Ones that are 10-3 are no good, so we use 2 different clubs based in private schools. They are horribly expensive, but are 08:30 - 17:15, so at least fit in with our jobs. It's very expensive though. Some parents "work from home" a lot in the summer, I think, but that doesn't fit too well with my job.

This is why I moved to the public sector, much more holiday

I mean, do the current school hours work well for anyone? How many women are kept out of the workforce because they have to be home for the kids after school? Longer school days would also create more jobs for TAs and activities assistants.

A friend with 3 children hires a nanny a few days a week, as it's cheaper than holiday clubs.

Once again, it's an example of women being shafted

If this is normal in Canada, why in the U.K. do we berate parents for complaining that it isn’t available here?

As a family we particularly struggle to find holiday childcare which covers 8-6 like our termtime wrap around does… it’s all 9-4 and such like. it has been MUCH worse since covid I’ve found (we’ve used holiday childcare for 8 years and this has been the worst).

I feel this. I get 22 days annual leave and have 3 primary aged children who have 60 odd days off per year !

Some years back for me but it was always an effort to get holiday cover. We would each take some leave and fortunately my working hours had some flexibility. My mother used to help out one or two weeks a year. In the summer I got a student once the children were late primary age onwards. Sometimes our old childminder would agree to bring her children for a day or two and help out. There really should be more formal provision.

If this is normal in Canada, why in the U.K. do we berate parents for complaining that it isn’t available here?

Because natives here have a peculiar attitude of it was shit for me so it should be shit for you.

This is exactly why I don't work. I have no family cover, no babysitters, dh is out the country most of the time. No jobs cover it.

Can you WFH? It's not ideal but with older kids it can be done. When DS started secondary school I worked from home 2 days a week, he didn't really need much input from me at that age, spent a lot of time watching youtube and gaming but needs must.

Obviously with younger children you can't really work with them around but it helps if you have older ones. I am a lone parent. My DS is older teen so I don't need childcare now. Luckily there is good childcare provision in my area for when he was younger, primary school did a club from 7.30am-6pm and there is one at the leisure centre that is 8am-6pm.

Yes it's rubbish. I'm fortunate that DH WFH and kids are at an age where they can go out with friends and entertain themselves but I can imagine for some it's pretty impossible.

And never go on holiday as a family.
It's shit OP. I went self employed and didn't work most holidays. Now they are in secondary school it doesn't matter and so work full time.

I never had an issue, you need to book early. Both parents take some leave and try some swaps with other parents

It will in a way , means less period of time they need childcare for starters as if you have a younger sibling as well that’s 2/3/4 more years of trying to figure out a solution with your annual leave to make something work . Also means it is cheaper as you won’t be paying double the cost of the care you do need , so you could possibly take unpaid leave without feeling the strain of it as much
Also easier in some ways as I remember as a child I sometimes used to spend a couple of days a week with a friend and then the friend would spend a couple of days with me so both our parents didn’t have to pay for those days . Harder when you have two I guess as different friends so couldn’t possibly take both of them

I muddled a few a years, leave different to DH, childcare swop with friend, summer clubs. I spend all year doing anything for lieu time to be off in the summer.
I went to work in a school instead.
DD hated all the summer clubs, mostly they are all sport or drama, both which were her worst nightmare. They were all 9-3pm and miles from work anyway.
Childcare swop was okay but sometimes the friends dad was in charge and he was pissed about DD being there (happy enough for me to take his child). Then one year they didn’t need to do it anymore.
It is a literal nightmare.

Yes, there needs something in place for holidays but also wraparound childcare. The country I'm from does: it's cheap and reliable. Most parents work full time and manage just fine as a result.

We're lucky that I have a very flexible job. Otherwise I don't know what we would do here in th UK.