...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?

@Hercisback@Sunnydays41@Tulipvase
*Plus also, if teachers work part-time, they still have 100% of their leave, whereas with any other profession, it's pro-rata..."

In schools the holidays are set - so you get your leave at the same time as everyone else - but you are only on 'leave' for the days you work.. If I work 2 days - I'm on leave (pro-rata) for 2 days each week of the holiday - whereas full time staff are on leave for all 5 of them.

Imagine I worked in a bog standard office. I work Thursday and Friday - (2 days).. when I book leave I don't book 5 days leave (Mon - Fri) to get my Thursday and Friday off.. I get a full week holiday - but only used 2 days leave!

Theoretically a teacher could work one day a week and still have 65 days holiday a year.

You really are talking nonsense.. I work one day a week say Wednesday - as a teacher - I get paid for that one day a week - there are 52 Wednesdays in a year.. How can I possibly get 65 days holiday?

(If the government went mad and instigated full time school - and only gave teachers 4 weeks off a year ... i'd be expected to work 48 days.. again.. How can I get 65 days off?)

@MasterBeth - the info you were given about maternity leave shows that teachers do not have a contractual entitlement to paid annual leave. They do have statutory rights to 28 days’ annual leave, but there is no statutory right for a teacher to be paid for all the school holidays. The practicalities of this are, clearly, that you need to consult a specialist legal adviser if you want an accurate answer to your question. It is silly to pretend there is no practical difference between one contract and another. When things go wrong with your employment, suddenly you notice the practical differences that you were airily claiming a week before were mere technicalities.

(Or, to put it another way, teachers’ employment contracts are ridiculous 😂)

@Walkaround 😂 perfect analysis. No other job I know has only 3 times a year you can resign, and if you miss it by a day you are stuck for another term. Know why, but it is a bit bonkers.

Trying to explain teacher notice periods and resignation dates to non-teachers is always funny. It has to be the most bonkers part of our contracts if you are used to having a fixed notice period in a normal job.

If you resign on 28/29th February it can be as short as 4 weeks, but if you resign on 1 November it can be over 5 months.

I think you are trying to make teachers contract and employment fit into your understanding of a job contract. It just doesn’t .

I agree it’s a salaried position so people are paid to
complete the job .If we wanted teachers to work more days though we would have to pay them more and their holidays becomes less.

When people are asking for schools to be open more days and have shorter holidays, teacher quite rightly point out they are not paid to be in school anymore days, and so I guess this is where the argument lies. I think it just is a job that doesn’t fit the standard model.

This. My contract says 6.5 directed hours a day plus a non specified but reasonable amount of non directed hours to cover the workload.

I'm a peripatetic advisory SEN teacher. My directed hours are 9-3.30 usually. This is time I spend either in schools or driving between them, or in meetings/training. I start work and hour earlier to do emails and make sure I'm prepped for the day. I work 3.30 onwards at home to do the paperwork. Sometimes I can finish about 5.30 and have dinner with my family. Most days (at least 2 of the 3 days a week that I work) I then have to carry on until the work is done. Usually this takes til 9 or 10. So I am doing between 3 and 6 hours a day non directed time. I'm not paid more for this. It is part of my contract and I agree, it's a lazily thought out clause.

It's a graduate job, I'm highly skilled in my specialisation and I've been teaching for 30 years. In many jobs I would have been on a higher salary years ago. That's why it matters that we don't get paid for the whole year. If the salary was this and I was paid for a full year it would really be a joke.

Different people consider it in different ways.

When I was teaching I considered my wages as a monthly thing. Ie salary/12 = monthly pay.

I never bothered to calculate whether some of the year was paid more, some unpaid etc.

Whilst one can leave when you like notice periods normally run to 31st Dec, 30th April(?) and 31st August.

I finished teaching in the July but my actual contract finished 31st August and so I got ‘paid’ for the remainder of July and August. ie 12 months of pay for my 12 months of work.

To complicate things further…. Most on a salary have no mention of hours worked. Teachers do - a notional number of hours/year. All but impossible to do the job properly and keep to the hours.

Not unrelated…… many TAs and Technicians are paid just for termtime only.

The pay is poor anyway. Their monthly pay is often calculated…..

(FT salary x40/52)/12 = monthly pay.

Our technician turned down overtime as it would put him above the benefits level - and he was a single man.

No wonder so many quit and work for supermarkets etc.

I think you just made my point for me.

I genuinely don't know what point you think you're making.

OP you've had lots of people explain teacher contracts now.

I don't work on the holidays (as a teacher) because I arrange my time not to and have better boundaries than I did as a less experienced teacher.

Maternity pay is where teachers can be winners (or losers) depending on the timing of birth.

Wait til you get into the complication of exam marking contracts!

The OP couldn't give a fuck. Just like the one who posted a similar faux-naif thread about the holidays earlier this year. I can't imagine why anyone who isn't a teacher cares about their pay schedules, but as the new academic year is about to start, it's a reasonable teacher-bashing intro.

Utter utter twatology.

"If you resign on 28/29th February it can be as short as 4 weeks, but if you resign on 1 November it can be over 5 months."

And if you resign on the 1st of June (instead of 31st May), it can be near enough 7 months!

When people are asking for schools to be open more days and have shorter holidays, teacher quite rightly point out they are not paid to be in school anymore days, and so I guess this is where the argument lies

Very true-that is is often when such discussion comes from.

I can’t imagine spending that much of my time debating how the holidays of a job that I don’t do, work! Maybe Gillian Keegan would try to work out how it works, though I’m sure even she’d just ask an employment lawyer, not mumsnet 😂

If they are only paid for 39 weeks a year then teachers are very well paid compared to other people like nurses

@Nw22 but they don't. Does that help ?

Not enough to keep people in the job though.

TA here
I get paid 32 hours a week for 34 weeks of the year plus they add in the statutory 4 weeks holidays pay in my monthly pay this equals £**
Then the £** amount is DIVIDED by 12
So I'm paid all year but NOT for all the school hols..just the four the law says they have to pay me.

I don't believe you.

That would mean you worked from 7am - 5pm and then 6pm-midnight every single day without any breaks.

The teacher workload survey gives an average of about 50 hours a week which is a lot of hours, I have done that before and I know it's really hard and that teachers work hard. But I don't believe you are working 80 hours a week very week of term.

To clarify….. If you’re a full time teacher you do get paid for 52 weeks per year. In our school you are employed on a set point which equals a yearly wage and you then move up through the bandings as you get more experience.

I am ‘support staff’ in a secondary school, also full time but I get paid 45 weeks per year (averaged out so get paid every month)

in my opinion this is discrimination. My pay is vastly reduced (it’s just above min wage per hour) and we’re also not allowed to work for anyone else in the hols without school’s prior approval. Most support staff have to work at least two jobs to survive. Some have 3 or 4.

Most teachers earn over double my wage.

@beyourownchampion you are incorrect. Teacher and support staff contracts are different. However, both are entitled to the statutory minimum annual leave of 5.6 weeks. In my LA, support staff get 5.8 weeks rising to 6.4 weeks for longer service. Technically, support staff have a contractual annual leave entitlement which is higher than teachers’ statutory entitlement (teachers have no contractual right to annual leave).

@MasterBeth have you taken the time to read the links I posted showing the legal position of teachers contacts having no annual leave entitlement but the working time directive overriding this with the statutory minimum of 5.6 weeks? You don’t seem to have responded to this but I feel sure it confirms the answer that teachers are paid for 5.6 weeks of the holidays but not the rest of them.

In office jobs, part time employees book off their time in hours. Ie if you work 15 hours just on a Thursday and Friday and you wanted a Thursday off, you’d book 7.5 hours. (Not one day) otherwise a part time employee would never be at work!!

you’d be entitled to 15 hours x 5 weeks = 75 hours approx.

For full disclosure, I was previously a teacher but the holidays/school closure periods and salary were absolutely not enough to make up for the terrible working conditions. I now work in a job and have a contractual entitlement to annual leave (higher than teachers’ statutory entitlement) as well as a contract with set working hours and the right to accrue time in lieu for hours worked above these (as well as lots of other flexible things). Teacher contracts are archaic and I would welcome modernisation of them. I would like to see teachers having set working hours with annual leave entitlement, overtime pay or time off in lieu etc. it might help to keep people in the profession! Hats off to all the teachers out there either back into term already or preparing for next week.