...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?

@beyourownchampion
It doesn’t really matter if your annual leave is worked out in days or hours. Depends on your job. I work part time in an office job and it’s worked out in days. My DH works full time in an office ion and it’s worked out in hours.

If you ask your HR/payroll for a breakdown of your support staff salary it will be something like
A: 38 weeks term time
B: 1 specified week for inset/training days (may be more specified weeks depending on the school/trust/LA)
C: Annual leave entitlement (at least 5.6 weeks but it’s more in plenty of LAs)

A+B+C = your total weeks of pay
Hourly rate x your total weeks of pay = your annual salary
your annual salary is then divided over 12 months to give your monthly salary

Yes they get the statutory entitlement as the working time directive overrides the teacher contract which does not give an entitlement to annual leave. I would like to see teachers having a contractual right to annual leave.

I am a teacher. I get paid for 1265 hours a year spread out over 12 months. My contract does also say 'you may be required on occasions to work additional hours'.

The problem, I have found in previous schools, is what is considered to be reasonable when it comes to working those additional hours. When I go back to school next week, I will spend usually between 2-3 hrs a day beyond my contracted hours to get planning, marking, admin done, plus whatever work I do during weekends/holidays. Usually, I don't mind as long as I have professional autonomy.

Unfortunately, I have worked in schools where working additional hours were considered 'reasonable' were in fact completely unreasonable. If you fail to keep up to to unrealistic policies (e.g. marking every piece of work every child did in each lesson - I work secondary and teach over 150 different kids every day), despite working ridiculous hours ticking off lots of useless crap that doesn't actually help children, they eventually start capability procedures. With no union representation, you can only jump ship.

I guess my point is that I don't mind the additional working hours in my contract, as long as they're not going make me burn out, that the tasks I spend time on actually helps the kids that I teach and I am not wasting precious unpaid time on tasks that only serve to tick a box.

Unfortunately, a lot of schools exploit this part of the contract. My contract says I am not entitled to be paid overtime.

Perhaps teachers, and other professionals, should just be paid for the hours they actually work to get the job done (including the work done in the holidays/weekends), rather than paid a salary. I doubt this would ever happen though. Probably would work out more expensive 😅

Perhaps teachers, and other professionals, should just be paid for the hours they actually work to get the job done (including the work done in the holidays/weekends), rather than paid a salary. I doubt this would ever happen though. Probably would work out more expensive 😅

Probably more expensive??? It would be impossible for us to paid for the hours we work.

I already have 4 "enrichments" booked in.
On these occasions I have the children after school from 3.30 after having taught them all day , they then have their tea at school and then we go to wherever it is we are going so for one example the theatre show they are doing and then at 9pm wait for parents to pick up. There will always be that one parent that is " stuck in traffic" so realistically I won't finish till 9.30PM. And then I am back in at 7.30 for the next school day.

And all this is not from my directed hours because there is already none left due to all the other meetings/training/essential things we have to do.

Last year I did 6 "enrichment opportunities" all together and all with a lovely SLT stating well its for the children as they never get these kind of experiences, although SLT don't attend or offer to do it!! 🤔🤐

But yeah I only work 39 weeks a year and get paid loads so.....

Can someone explain what happens if a teacher leaves mid year?
So for example, they have completed their teaching hours annual requirement, but say left just before the summer holidays began. Do they get those 3 months of pay given over to them in a lump sum? They've earned it!

It would be paid normally, not in a lump sum.

Teachers have to give notice at half term to leave at the end of that term. So if a teacher gave notice in May half term, their leaving date would be 31st August.

Teachers are not usually allowed to leave mid term. If in an emergency a school agreed to waive that notice period and the teacher left for example in June a month before the schools break up then I think they would lose their summer holiday pay.

You have to hand your notice in by 31st May and then your leaving date is 31st August. If you don't hand your notice in till 1st June then your leaving date is 31st December.

@Batatahara

I don't care at all if you believe me or not. I often work those hours and if I don't work 6 hours at night then I make those hours up at the weekend. I'm tired of people not believing the realities of many teachers. Do you think the same about lawyers, doctors, solicitors or nurses when they share their working hours? I don't get the mentality of people who hear people share their experiences and tell them they're lying.

About ten years ago I was already an experienced teacher and the workload dropped to a more manageable level. Now SEND levels have sky rocketed, I have at least 10 more children in my class than 10 years ago. The job has changed beyond recognition. I hope to leave within 4 years when my dc are old enough to not need me during the holidays.

@HoliHormonalTigerLillyTheSecond

excuse me? 😂😂😂😂😂 I wasn't moaning. I was just staring factual info about how my pay works. Jeeeez! I love my job. 13 weeks off a year... who wouldn't.

We get paid for the 1265 hours directed time that we do. This is worked during term time, 39 weeks to be exact. Years ago it was decided that to prevent teachers experiencing hardship over the 6 weeks, that the salary would be paid over the 12 months. We do not get any paid holidays. Most teachers do work through the holidays though and I would say ALL do over the 1265 hours that we are paid for term time.

Finally. Someone answered the OP’s Q!

My last contribution to this thread, to the delight of many of you...

Thanks you to everyone who was willing to engage in the spirit in which my questions were intended, especially @sparklelikeadiamond and others, who have gone to the trouble of detailing the precise wording of policies etc, which has been very helpful. (@echt and @TheCrystalPalace were just rude.)

I started of asking about the hows and whys of teachers employment and I think the hows have been answered really clearly, but the whys still feel ambiguous, even among teachers. For example:

@Takoneko thinks we shouldn’t think of holidays as unpaid.

“It’s also why I think talking about holidays as unpaid and all the extra hours as unpaid is unhelpful. It gives the impression that it’s all totally voluntary and out of the goodness of our hearts. It isn’t a choice, it is contracted and some schools stretch that elastic clause a lot further than others.”

@Zonder thinks it’s really important that we think of holidays as unpaid

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.

@Walkaround is very clear that it is much more than semantics

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.

@TheHateIsNotGood thinks…

This thread is about if Teachers get 'holiday pay'/paid for holidays and the consensus here is that they do.

But @Pieceofpurplesky is sure that…

Regardless of anyone thinking teachers are paid for the holidays, they are not. You can argue the toss as much as you like. It's in black and white in the terms and conditions.

As many people suggest, it’s complicated and odd. My first comment on this thread was “It doesn't make sense to me.” I don’t think I’m alone:

@noblegiraffe
Teacher contracts are weird and don't fit with the world of work.

@PeggyPiglet
It's a very lazily thought out clause

@Walkaround
(Teachers’ employment contracts are ridiculous 😂)

@sparklelikeadiamond
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!

So, as teachers are not responsible for their terms and conditions, I don’t see how asking why and how their contracts are “weird and don’t fit the world of work” is teacher bashing. I would say it's the opposite – teachers arguably lose out because of it.

To repeat, I support teachers’ pay increases to (at least) reinstate pay levels from before austerity, increased teacher recruitment to lessen workload, improved pay and conditions for TAs, and higher taxes to pay for it all. I don’t agree to extending the school year, making teachers work even harder. I believe that having a weird, nonsensical, confusing contract that even teachers don’t understand doesn’t help in the wider debate about teachers’ pay. Maybe this thread proves that.

Teachers, I hope you have a good start to the term.

I think the notion that we “don’t get paid” for all of the holidays is erroneous to be honest. Fairly sure it’s not stated in contracts that our pay only applies to the 39 weeks in school, and unlike many support staff, teaching roles are not classified as “term time only”. I think it really boils down to-

• Teacher’s salaries aren’t that great, and the workload is usually pretty intense.
• The 13 weeks holiday is a nice perk, and goes some way towards balancing out the underwhelming pay- though this still needs to improve!

I’m always horrified to hear that teachers spend so much of their holidays working, as well as evenings and weekends. In over 20 years of teaching, I’ve always treated the holidays as precisely that, and used them to switch off and recharge from the hard work during term time- surely what anyone should reasonably expect to be able to do when on holiday.

Rude? Whatever.
I am still struggling to see why it's any of your business to "understand" other people's pay and conditions.
That's more rude, in my book.

But a teacher didn't bring this up and you have put forward that they think that they are hard done by.

What a patronising little thread summary. How odd.

I don’t think that’s fair - the original question was phrased unfortunately, but I think it’s considerably less rude to try to understand how an employment contract works than to express strident, negative opinions about a group of people whose situation you can’t be bothered to try to understand at all, which is the usual intention of threads which start this way.

It’s fair enough to want to understand how someone’s employment contract actually works if you are affected by strikes relating to it, as that gives you a reason to be interested in the causes of the dispute.

@mosesherzog there are plenty of posts showing evidence of how the pay is calculated. I'm surprised you don't know, if you've been teaching 20 years.

@MasterBeth well congrats, you've managed a post to show people have different opinions. Was that your goal?

It is significant because people like you keep bringing it up. It's really not hard to understand.

We do get some paid holidays, but the same amount as most other people.

I work in admin / HR in a primary school. Our teachers do get paid over the holidays. Their contracts are 27.5 hours per week all year round (52 weeks per year). The teachers work more hours during the term than 27.5, effectively making up the hours for the rest of the year so that they can have all holidays off. As we are a primary school there is limited marking etc - most of our teachers don’t work over the summer break or maybe do a day or two.
Their job is difficult - however all our teachers leave by 4pm, have a lunch break, and don’t work all of the teacher training days as they do an hour most weeks on Mondays (3:15-4:15) This year they will only do 1 day training in school. So 4 out of 5 “teacher training” days they will just be off.
Its not a bad salary for only working 38 weeks of the year… they earn a lot more than I do. I used to work 50 hours a week in hotel sales for £18k a year, a teachers salary seems great to me. But I guess it’s all relative.

This year they will only do 1 day training in school. So 4 out of 5 “teacher training” days they will just be off.

Really? No Twilights?

As we are a primary school there is limited marking etc

Riiight.

It's a strange conclusion to reach immediately after saying as they do an hour most weeks on Mondays (3:15-4:15) - an additional 30 hours (I'm estimating there, obviously, it could be 25 weeks, too) more than covers the CPD requirement with the single extra day.