...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?

It's broken down into hours on the payslip. Like most people, salaried or not.

If a teacher doesn't work for a day (unpaid leave or strike day), they lose 1/365 annual salary.

Oh, dear....

It’s just semantics.

you can either see them working 38 or so weeks at a higher salary or 52 weeks at a lower one.

Either way, to be honest, teachers are underpaid for what they do, especially in the STEM subjects, This is evidenced in the teacher shortage that we have.

I don't think I have ever had my pay broekn down into a hourly rate. Not since I was working in Bejam* as a Saturday job in the sixth form.

(*Ask your parents)

I think this is what I’m trying to say.

It's been on every computer generated payslip I have ever received or produced for others since 1992. I've worked for the NHS, schools, local authorities, insurance companies and accountants - all salaried roles, but all automatically included the hours worked and the hourly rate.

A teachers salary is 28k they get paid 28k

A TA salary is 20k they will get 17k (39 weeks plus 5 weeks hols)

That's the difference.

I'm on the 'support staff' pay scale in a school, my annual salary is £31k .. my actually annual salary is £27k. I work 40hrs a week term time only.

A teacher role will be advertised at (ie) £35k and they will receive £35k - any annualising equations have already been made if that makes sense.

@MasterBeth - if you asked tour employer for 3 weeks off, unpaid and they agreed to this, then you had to work from home anyway, but they still didn’t pay you for that time, you’d be pissed off, wouldn’t you? Unpaid time is unpaid time.

£38k. Which makes it about £8 an hour after tax averaged over the year.

Yes, the only paid holiday days full-time teachers get is the minimum statutory requirement of 20 days plus 8 days bank holidays. So yes they do get 28 days holiday days paid which is factored into their annual salary. Anything in excess of this is unpaid.

Thats why you were correct @Tulipvase to question the assertion from a PP that part-time teachers get the same amount of paid holidays that full-time teachers get. They don’t. A part-time teacher that works half the days a full-time teacher does only gets 14 days of paid holiday instead of 28 days paid. The days all teachers have off school in excess of their legal statutory allowance are not paid-holiday days nor are they working days. They are simply days of the year that teachers (regardless if they are full-time or part-time) are not contracted to work in schools by the government e.g August.

I feel that there would be so much less confusion if people just understood the 6 week “summer holiday” as non-contractual working weeks for teachers instead of “paid teacher holiday”. Like a seasonal worker. If the government wanted to reduce the summer holidays from 6 weeks to 5 weeks, they would have to pay teachers 1 weeks more worth of pay each year.

A bit like if a park pays an ice cream man to work from April through to September each year (including statutory holiday pay). The months he doesn’t work (October through to March) are not his “paid holiday”. They are days in the year he is not contractually hired to work for. The fact that teachers get 12 equal payments for their 195 days worked spread throughout the year is for ease of administration by the employer and employee.

Of course, teachers work well well in excess of the hours they are paid for each week, making what looks like a reasonable annual salary abysmal in reality when you actually work out the pay-per-hour for hours totalled over the year but that’s a conversation for another day!

Boggles the mind.

Mary awakens at 6 a.m. so that she can get ready, get her lunch and the children's lunches together and leaves at 7:30 a.m. for school. Her children have to get a neighbor/friend to get them to school because teachers need to be at school before the children. Mary gets paid to teach children the basic skills they need in life and advanced skills that may get them a decent job and be able to read a basic instruction manual. Her children are in after-school care because she cannot leave until an hour after her children are oos. During that extra hour, she works on grading papers, seeing if any child seems to be lagging and takes home the rest of the work to grade/read and make the next days lesson plan. She gets paid a whopping 30-40K a year and OMG! She gets holidays off!

Jane, who WFH, gets up at 7:30 a.m. , drops her kids off at school and goes to work in a blouse and pj bottoms. She works on a computer and can get up and go to the bathroom anytime she needs, get a coffee or juice, eat at her desk. She takes a break at 10 a.m. to get laundry going and text a friend. Another break at noon for lunch, more laundry and think about dinner. After she takes a break and gets the kids home at 3:30, she gives them a snack and tells them to watch TV/play on their phones, do homework etc. Jane gets paid 60K a year and is now in a panic because her work is now requiring her to go to the office twice a week. She also gets holidays off and paid 4 weeks of holiday time. Jane is demanding a raise if she is going to have to commute, get dressed, and put her children in after-school care.

One of these things is not like the other. I won't get into the abuse Mary has to take every. single. day. from students, parents, principals, because, after all, that's what she gets paid for, right?

5 weeks of the school holidays are known as 'school closure' days. Teaching staff are not entitled to any pay for these days. Wages are distributed evenly to create 12 equal payments. If teachers were to be paid FOR these days then their salaries would be significantly higher. As someone explained earlier, it's like you having the weekend off. You are not being paid but you still receive your monthly/annual salary. It doesn't get deducted for 2 days of no work per week. In other workplaces it would mean you being told to stay off work but not receive any payment for that time. Your annual salary would be recalculated into 12 equal payments so you receive a a wage each month but you are earning less.

Plenty of teachers don’t get paid holidays, depends what you teach! Your post is so presumptuous. I’m a teacher but am self employed so am paid hourly. Therefore no holiday, sick pay etc

So yes we get a much greater number of paid holidays but not 12/13 weeks. As previous posters have mentioned, I think many would leave the profession if they didn't have this perk. I honestly believe I would. I also would never recommend that anyone goes into teaching just because they want long holidays.

So in a standard job, say you were on £30k…you would get paid that over 52 weeks. So when we talk about a teacher salary being £30k, is that actually £30k, or £30k minus the holidays (so less than £30k, whatever would get taken off for holidays. ). If the answer is the salary is actually £30k then they do get paid over the holidays?

Yes we are paid by the hour effectively. We have a set number of hours that we are paid for and required to work, it’s called the Teachers Pay and Conditions document if you fancy some light reading. Of course we never stick to those and so the majority of our work is unpaid. The only way you would work the hours you are paid for is if you arrived 10 mins before the kids and left 10 mins after the kids.

I have literally no skin in this game - I don't have kids, I don't really have much interest in teachers. It's just all the posts that are irritating (and there are a LOT). I generally try to avoid these threads because they're just so annoying but it's actually quite hard to avoid. You all seem to be in a tragic victim echo chamber of teachers just telling each other how hard done by you are. I usually wouldn't engage but this is just TOO annoying.

I mean, name another profession that goes on and on about how terrible their lives are in the way teachers do on here??

Both are true.
They are paid for a fixed number of days/weeks working which gives them the rest as holidays
But unlike other people they don't get to take paid holiday at other times (usually) and they know this when they sign up, and that their pay will be over 12 months which helps them to budget.

So they do have an income over the holidays but they are not paid to work those days.....just as no-one is paid to work their holidays.

It is salaried so teachers are paid the stated amount, and they are professionals so expected to completed whatever is necessary to the role, although anything over the directed 1265 hours can be done at a time chosen by the professional ( whether this is a realistic or fair amount , can vary considerably dependent on the school).

However unless on the leadership scale teachers can only be directed to work 195 so if we wanted them to work more days, pay would have to be increased.

Exactly. It still boggles my mind that there is confusion. It’s just the pay for 195 days directed-time worked throughout the year (plus the statutory legal minimum holiday pay of 28 days) split into 12 equal monthly payments. Teachers receive a paycheck IN August but not FOR August. The pay is for days in school worked earlier in the academic year.

I left teaching for many reasons but the main one was that I was always on a 312 day contract. So I wouldn’t get paid over summer.
this is was super common in our MAT

But it is illegal not to pay a permanent employee for a certain number of holiday days every year, so that’s untrue, @Mumof2teens79 .

I mean, name another profession that goes on and on about how terrible their lives are in the way teachers do on here??

It virtually always in response to people saying things like..

Yeah but, you have it easy.
You only work 9-3 and have half the year off.
Can’t you just use the same plans as last year?
Must be nice to never need childcare.
Teachers are lazy.
You only work part time.

etc etc

Teachers respond with, ‘actually it’s quite hard work and I don’t work 9-3’ and are then told that teachers always moan!

I say nothing now to people who say things like this. It’s easier to just ignore them and walk off.