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 🙁

Grannie: "Bugger this, I'm taking early retirement. Bribe me with some wine and I'll take the kids for a couple of weeks in summer"
Government: WE MUST GET THE OVER FIFTIES BACK INTO WORK

Also Government: JOINED UP THINKING IS VITAL

Interesting, thanks for the perspective.

Definite huge perk of being a teacher at my kids school. I honestly don't know how we'd do it otherwise.

I put mine on holiday club, there was a few options from 8, under 8 only the ymca one would take them. Once they hit 10&12 they went to the local museum a lot of the time who had activities for kids for just a £1 or 2, it was 2 minutes from my work. Sometimes I went to work really early, leaving around 6, and their dad went in after I finished

5 weeks leave each. 2 weeks together as a family. So 3 weeks each childcare. That's 8 of the weeks covered.

Leaving 4 weeks for childcare swaps /holiday clubs etc. I managed it as a single parent, just made sure I booked holiday clubs the moment they opened.

I voted YANBU but there are options out there - you just need a military focus and trust in the truth that is does, suddenly, get SO much easier when they are older.
The problem for us was cost. My DH works in education so know lots of ex students, trustworthy, who loved taking our DS for £30 a day. They basically could chill at our home and get some independence, earn a bit of cash, and our DSs had cool older 'siblings' for a while. Mind you, cleaning the house every bastard night was a faff almost too far.
The local kids' club had daycare days - and, brilliantly, were open at helpful times - I think 8-4 and you could pay extra for later. You had to get your name down quickly, though.
We had no family to help out, and it was tough - we had to save about £1k just to get the DC through the summer.
But it does suddenly get SO much better! Then you can start paying your kids to keep the house clean, have dinner ready for when you return, clean the bathrooms, get the shopping in, clean the garage out, wash the bed linen, boil-wash the towels... all good lessons for the future.
But yes, those early years were tough. I feel for you, OP.

My eldest is autistic so the museum option as crazy as it sounds worked well, she could spend her day studying rocks

I think people blithely saying that all you have to do is swap with another parent must live in a very different area to me!

Ha. Come to NI where the summer holidays are 2 entire months long and holiday camps – where they run at all – are 10-2, if that. Mind you, DD only goes to school until 1.50 every day so it’s not much different. Not that I’m bitter. But as a solo parent, it is really bloody tough. I’ve had to resort to sending her away for a week at a time to my sister in law and her grandparents, and I’m very lucky to have that option. The rest of the time I just have to muddle through.

There are 65 days off for school holidays.

7 of these are usually bank holidays (2 at Xmas, NYD, 2 at Easter, the late May BH and the late August BH)

65-7 = 58 days you need cover.

Your 25 days annual leave plus your partner's = 50 days covered.

Which means there are 8 days left to find cover. You could then look into parental leave or buying extra annual leave if your employer allows it.

I know some of these options are not ideal (like having different holiday to your partner) but this is to illustrate there are ways round it if you really want to try.

It used to be my mastermind subject - holiday childcare in x area! So much is word of mouth.
When mine was younger I took no leave in summer. Reason was there were options in summer whereas half terms were trickier. We had our family holiday in October.
I also worked school hours as the 9/3 type childcare is much more plentiful than 8/6.
Mine did dance, gymnastics and once when I was desperate football camp.
Pgl activity holiday.
A local large employer does a week play scheme and buses kids in.
Week at grandmas.
Week at her friend’s grandmas.
Swaps with another mum who was a teacher. I’d have hers in term time after school she reciprocated in hols.
Most difficult was when she was 11/12 ish and too old for care but not old enough for 8/6 on own daily.

Childcare top trumps here. Single parent, DC with SEN. The situation with paid care is dire, there is nothing after school for my youngest (NT) in term time and I have to work round that. I'm lucky I can. Holiday activities don't cover work hours so not much good, I'm lucky to have some family help (not ex though). If people are going to be pushed into more and more work by the government then something has to be done about childcare. Saying it will be free/cheap is no use when there are no places.

It's hard for all parents but, as others have said, nigh on impossible for sen kids! We have booked some activity days out with local groups to keep DS socialising but they all require 1 to 1 support for DS due to his needs. So that essentially puts me in a term time part time job until I don't even know when. I love spending the time with him, and he needs time at home to regulate after the school year, but no real holiday or after school club options is tough after 6 weeks.

Massive perk of being a teacher. Let's face it, being sorted for the school holidays is a major reason why many women accept lower pay than they would in other sectors. There are a lot of vacancies at the moment..... worth considering?

Swapping with others is ideal if you can organise it. I think people are a bit shy about asking.... I have a friend who works in the NHS and in the last we've said we would swap and have here during the holidays if she could have ours for INSED. Flipping exhausting having 6 under 6 for the day, but the kids have an amazing time!

Look on childcare/nanny websites. Many teachers do hope to get a bit of a boost to their income during the holidays. No, they aren't a childminder as such, but they often do some decent educational activities! They aren't likely to do more than a week though.

If there's something that you think local government should be doing, don't just complain on here. Contact them! Explain what you think is needed and what you would expect to pay for it. If there's enough demand they might put something on - some do, but they need to know they will at least break even as their budgets are seriously tight.

I only voted YABU because it shouldn’t be a government centrally run system. It would have been terrible

Otherwise it is just booking those clubs early enough.

This is the only reason I'm glad DH is a teacher.

Yeah I agree it’s ridiculous. Parental Leave is great but its not getting paid, which I’m pretty sure a lot of people can’t manage right now. It’s a system which no longer suits the world we live in.

I feel you OP. Most holiday clubs around here start at 7 year old and my DD is 4. There is a nursery which will take her but I need to drive her there and get back to work which means I still need time off.

Who do you expect to run the holiday clubs? Teachers are on leave, everyone else is at work. Unless you want the dinner ladies and lollypop man to be in charge. (Which is actually not a bad idea.)

I get 25 days but my co worker also has kids and we can't take the month end off so it's difficult. I wfh two days a week though and DH 3

www.gov.uk/parental-leave

I only had one and agree it makes swaps easier.
It’s a huge organisational task I used to have it written on wall in kitchen like a battle plan.
Some had to be booked and paid for months in advance.
I paid for DD’s friend to go to pgl as DD didn’t want to go alone, then that friend took her on their uk holiday as a thank you so 2 weeks covered.
DD’s hobby also did a masterclass for a week each summer once they were a certain grade.

@Indigotree I've often thought there should be job shares between parents and students. Parent in term time/week daytime and student in the evening/weekend/holidays. To be agreed between them and the employer. Obviously it wouldn't work for all jobs and all people but could help in some circumstances.

I agree, it's a complete nightmare for so many parents. It's not even just as simple as saying take annual leave (even at separate times from a partner if you have one) as some companies are more restrictive than other on when you can take holiday.

My single parent friend struggles with Xmas, she had been granted holidays 2 years in a row but on the third the employer said no, someone else was going to take Xmas. No holiday clubs over Xmas, elderly grandparents. She managed to cover it between me and another friend but she was so stressed and worn out by it.

It's been mentioned but there is an option for unpaid parental leave, I think it's a max of 4 weeks per year, 18 weeks total per child until they are 18. Obviously still not perfect of you can't afford it, although if you have more than one child it might be worth it compared to summer childcare. Company can delay it though so not guaranteed you could request it over summer as they could delay it until October.

Imagine if men did the majority of childcare. The entire situation would have been sorted by now, probably with most companies shutting down in August. But because its women who are mostly affected...Well...