...to think teachers DO get paid over the holidays?

[MasterBeth]

It doesn't make sense to me.

Some people say teachers don't get paid over the holidays. They are paid, they say, for 40 weeks, but their money is aggregated over 52 weeks and paid monthly.

What does that even mean? How is it (practically) any different to being paid (less per week) for 52 weeks?

What kind of teacher are you, if you don't mind me asking?

The point is, if teachers did do this, it would be unpaid overtime.
Because most teachers do work during holidays, they are doing so unpaid.
The more work teachers do during unpaid holidays, the less they get per hour of work they do.

Teachers should really be paid for say, 1300 hours, rather than 1265 as that is more realistically the amount of hours teachers actually work.

Primary, full time , Middle manager with a large class, plus two subjects and a key stage to run.

I'm just trying to work out what the fuck it's got to do with anyone who isn't a teacher, what they get paid. Also, what the OP's motive for this thread is, as I'm not buying the "Oh, I've got huge respect for teachers" bullshit.

Goady thread which needs binning, in my opinion.

I suppose it's necessary or significant because people bring it up ALL THE TIME. It's one of the first things people mention when you tell them you are a teacher ..oh lucky you getting all those holidays.

I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to grasp that there are days you don't work AND don't get paid.

I'm not sure what you mean about the amount of time needed to teach a child. It's not a manufacturing process that has a specific start and end point. It's about quality of learning and teaching, not quantity. Children need down time away from the classroom, to spend time with their families and time to just be children.

School is extremely important but it's not the only important factor in a child's development. It seems more important than ever now of course as schools are left to pick up the pieces of years of cuts to services in mental health, additional support needs, and other supports which have been eroded so severely. I think a lot of teachers get so disheartened when they knock in their pans to help children and families yet seem to face never ending criticism.

My questions have not been about what
teachers get paid. (The answer in my opinion is not enough. Teachers should, for starters, have their real pay restored to levels it was at before austerity. And extra recruitment should be out in place so no-one is doing 16 hour days.)

My questions have been about how teachers get paid. And if someone could answer that question satisfactorily, I would shut up. Please feel free to help.

You don't even need to go back for a couple of days before the holiday. If term ends on July 19th you can set your return to work date as July 20th if you want, there's no rule against it. I did that, many years ago, because my mat pay was going to run out 4 weeks into the summer holidays.

My question would be 'why do you care?'

I suppose it's necessary or significant because people bring it up ALL THE TIME.

But that doesn't make it necessary or useful or a good idea. Wouldn't it be better to just get paid for 12 months of work, which includes directed time, non-directed time and holiday?

Because it seems to be an anomaly in the world of work that no-one can seem to adequately explain. Why care about anything? I'm curious and am seeking to understand the rationale for it. Can you help?

I find with teaching that our time is not respected and our workload is piled upon and we're expected to just do more and more as hours paid, directed time etc seems to be a murky area that schools exploit and the government uses to guilt teachers into working all the hours of the day 'for the good of the children'.

Because it seems to be an anomaly in the world of work

Yes, it is. Teacher contracts are weird and don't fit with the world of work. We're off school in the holidays because the kids aren't in and so there's no teaching to do. Back in the day we were allowed to just get on with it.

@MasterBeth Teachers get paid for so many days or hours of work per year. This is spread over 12 months.

However teachers don't think about it like that. They think about how many actual hours/days they do.

30k for 9 months work is what they get. Reasonable wage for 9 months work right?

30k for 11 months work is probably more the reality as teachers work more hours than contractually stated, so basically teachers are feeling like they need to work more than this and aren't getting paid any more for it. So essentially their hourly rate is lower and they don't get paid much per hour they actually work.

I understand why it's a weird argument. I guess it's hard to explain but it is a case of teachers get paid for their contracted hours, which are usually much more than that, and this often cuts into the holidays. So teachers are working in holidays but not getting paid, basically.

Sorry, it's maybe too late in the evening but I really don't understand what you mean.
Someone on page 2 explained it well with the analogy of being paid in daily increments even though you never work at weekends.

People don't tend to comment on others who work 9-5 "oh wow you get two days holiday every single week". It's unpaid time off. It's the same principle.

OP it's perfectly bloody obvious that teachers are term time workers who get paid for working 39 weeks a year, plus holiday pay. The annual leave days that their holiday pay covers are set out in their conditions of service. Like all other term time workers a proportion of days every year are unpaid however their salary is calculated and paid in equal instalments over the year.

Ps, I've never met a teacher who didn't work well over and above their contracted hours in both primary and secondary schools.

Not saying they don’t deserve it, but the teachers pension scheme is massively overly generous imho. It includes a 23.6% employer contribution for example !

UK average salary is around £30k, so you’d expect a teacher to get at least an average salary, the pension scheme means they do better than that imho.

Some of my sons teachers work way beyond the contracted hours though, just like the many workers in the private sector on salaries that don’t get paid extra for working more than the minimum hours.

Quite frankly I wished teachers and nurses etc. got more than the crappy politicians that just line their own pockets and waste fortunes every day.

That’s exactly how we are paid. Our pay covers everything that is part of our contracts. Non-directed time is not unpaid, it is part of the contractual obligations that we are have to fulfil in return for our salary. Holidays are days that we cannot be directed to work. They are like shroedingers holiday, neither work days or annual leave. Once a teacher decides to do work in them as part of the “any other hours” part of their contract to carry out their job effectively then they become paid working hours. Our contract includes them and they are part of the obligations that we agree to in return for our overall salary.

We don't get allocated annual leave. That's Scotland.

The holidays aren't annual leave, we can't accrue annual leave while on maternity, we can't claim it back if we are ill when we are off and we can't book it when we like.

They are the holidays when kids aren't in school and therefore there is no teaching to be done. So we are off school.

It's not like other jobs.

No teacher has done this. Ever. It's never been point of complaint. They point out a fact. That is all.

As it happens, the OP who is raising this subject.

An easy way of comprehending this is that IF teachers were paid for the holidays (and weekends now I think of it), they could and would be compelled to come into school building and work.

But they aren't so they don't.

HTH.

I agree. I think those not paying teachers enough use this to make teachers accept less than fait pay. They earn less than me but I think they deserve more. They do work in the holidays and can't just find extra work in the odd week. They deserve more but they also need to realise they are paid for their holidays. Because they're on s full.time contract which demands work outside school and term time.

More than me not less i meant to say. Very tired!

The contract basically says teachers get paid e.g 30k if they do all the hours that are actually needed to do the job effectively.

The problem is there's no real benchmark for this as the job never feels 'done'. Some teachers will work themselves to death to feel like they've achieved this, and certain schools will expect this too.

It's a very lazily thought out clause, and is one of the reasons so many teachers burn out because it's not quantifiable. 'any other hours needed to do the job effectively' can have no limit in the eyes of SLT in schools or teachers who feel like they can't feasibly achieve this without killing themselves.