20 days annual leave is Dickensian

[Palacelife]

Most firms now start on 25. I think 20 just smacks of a mean firm and not a place you want to be. AIBU?

It's expected in teaching.

That's the difference.

It's expected you plan, mark, assess and use the non teaching time to prepare lessons and carry out your teaching effectively.

So yes, they get a lot of time when they aren't in class teaching. It's not like annual leave as other professions get.

It's very much expected in lots of other professions too.

I don't know why teachers don't realise that? It's not remotely unique to teaching

I don't think anyone teaching for a few years is badly paid given they are off for 13 weeks a year. However, there are few jobs where every 50 minutes or so 25-30 different people come into your room and you are expected to have planned an activity around a specific topic, tailored to each of their needs, to ensure they each progress learning it, that they all behave, that they produce work you can assess and that at the end of the year they demonstrate good progress in examinations. By the next lesson your planning needs to reflect the progress they did/didn't make the previous lesson.Then every two hours or so they all have a Break where you are expected to supervise them. You are also responsible for a group's pastoral care and for safeguarding every child. You probably, if you teach full-time, have 3 non-contact periods a week where you can prepare, mark, assess, produce resources, write reports, mark exams, follow-up issues with individual students or staff. Ontop of that you do weekly CPD after school, possibly lead the CPD, attend meetings and parent evenings and then go home and really mark and prepare. In term-time it's pretty unrelenting from 8-5pm plus whatever you do at home.
I'm sure some other jobs are as relentless but not many. You can teach 150 different children a day in a secondary school. Most lessons have a 3-5 minute turnaround.

I'm sorry but I think heaps of professional jobs are just as relentless and high responsibility and I think some teachers must live in a bubble if they don't realise that

I often don't manage to eat or wee all day.

Yes, but they'll probably have to spend $30,000 a year on healthcare and medical insurance for themself and their family.

Can you give us some examples? I am genuinely interested.

You genuinely can't think of any by yourself?

Not as I have described the pressures, no.

Who said it was unique?

But it is a feature of teaching.
In teaching, you don't get annual leave. You can't book leave.
You have the set hours of contact time.

The rest......well I am sure you know the score.

This thread is about annual leave. Bank Holidays. Now if you are in the kind of job where you book annual leave but then work on those days you have booked off, then that's your call.

Same for being in a job where you work in the evenings and on weekends. But it's not an expectation of the job.

It's an expectation in teaching that you do work outside of your contracted hours. You also don't get bookable annual leave as other professions do.

It's absolutely expected in many professions to work outside contracted hours. I don't know why you can't grasp that?

I know other jobs are highly responsible- a Dr for example, a vet- but the pressure of numbers and continual monitoring of everything a teacher does is utterly relentless. The 25-30 different students every 50 minutes or so are continually 'measured' by attendance, punctuality, behaviour, progress, exam results- all your responsibility. The progress of every student and every class is checked every few weeks. You are set targets for them.You're expected to support other staff, to make wider contributions to the school, your marking is checked, your exam results are checked. You are expected to form relationships with parents re:their child and update them about concerns, deal with behaviour issues for each student, give sanctions and ensure they are carried out, your teaching is observed and 'critiqued' for improvement.You follow every government initiative. You ensure every student who has SEN is catered for explicitly according to their plan every lesson (you might have anywhere between 1-12 in a mainstream class. These are classroom teachers. If you have a paid responsibility-they can be huge eg responsible for standards in English teaching across a secondary school of 1500 students and a department of 10-12 staff- assessing their planning, marking, teaching, schemes of work, student progress becomes your responsibility.

I also know teachers who manage to fit in 10-15 hours tutoring every week alongside their full time teaching job. I certainly couldn't do 10-15 hours of a second job alongside mine.

I' don't begrudge teachers the long holidays at all, but I am baffled at teachers who have no idea how many other professions also work evenings and weekends etc

Incorrect, but a common misunderstanding.

And being constantly responsible for, say, life and death situations isn't?

I'm sorry but this kind of lack of understanding about what other roles entail just smacks of living in a bubble

Anyway I am off to sleep and I have a long week ahead

Perhaps you could provide the list of other jobs tomorrow then.

I'm well aware Drs are responsible for life and death situations at times- very stressful on those occasions. Surgeons particularly deal with very high-pressure operations.

I'm interested in what other jobs you see with this level of pressure, workload, scrutiny and responsibility for so many people on a daily basis and for whole years at a time? Junior Drs, surgeons. What else?

So you can take every day off if you choose, with no risk to your employment?

No you don’t. 2 weeks in summer and one at Christmas is 13 days, leaving you 15.

LuluBlakey1 I have a lot of respect for teachers. Many of my friends are teachers. But in all honesty, reading what you do in a day/term/year sounds like a nice easy life compared to many professionals.

I work for one of the big 4, previously top FTSE companies in HR. I have a very good understanding of different professions and career maps. The hours are easily 50 plus per week with a huge amount of responsibility. Looking after 30 children for 50 minutes etc sounds like a picnic in comparison - I don't say that lightly as a mum of 3 under 6.

A couple of people have said that, but it is how it works in practice, in England at least. Care to explain what you mean?

On the matter of hours worked by teachers, it can probably be thought of as an inflexible compressed hours arrangement.

Long hours during term time and little or no compulsory work in most of the holidays.

The 'teachers are paid for x days a year' is to make it clear that, if they tried to direct teachers to work in the holidays, salaries would have to increase accordingly as they currently aren't paid for this.

It's also undeniable that most teachers are low paid for a graduate professional role. Any time MN talks about salaries people are on far more than most teachers and many regard even experienced teacher salaries of £40-50k as pretty poor even as a graduate trainee salary.

@LuluBlakey1 and @Happyhappy10
funnily enough I have worked as a teacher before and since retreated into one of the classic professions
Teaching is a very tough job which is as stressful. It’s the perpetually more to do that then is ever time to. It’s not just teaching in the class, that’s the easy part. It’s the planning, marking, tutorial/ pastoral stuff, the ofsted is unusual as it’s specific to you, it’s being observed and personally criticised

in my other profession, you have billing targets, negligence risk, demanding clients a tough regulator

both are really tough.

I think teachers get a hard time and they don’t get paid anywhere near as much as the professionals @Happyhappy10 speaks of

and education is so important, we are probably lagging behind other countries, but that’s a whole other conversation

All jobs have to make sure their employees take the 28 days and people will still have to take a wet week in December if they haven't done this, this isn't different because it's unlimited holiday.

What happens when someone books every school holiday at the beginning of the year, is their workload factored in. If you can't do this it is not unlimited.

Many teachers have never left school, so they don't really know what the working world is like in a typical job in terms of holidays. Most went from being a child at school (with lots of holidays) to going to university (with very long holiday breaks) to working as a teacher. So they have never known any different.

i fear unlimited would be very stressful as I would worry that people thought I was taking too much or that I was working more than other people . Does it work out ok?

Any time MN talks about salaries people are on far more than most teachers and many regard even experienced teacher salaries of £40-50k as pretty poor even as a graduate trainee salary.

I disagree with this. I’m a graduate, and the global company I work for hires graduates. A trainee salary is not much above minimum wage. Everyone will have a degree. Most have masters or even higher. I’m in my 50s and am “well paid” at 35k. I live in London.

What kind of attitude? A Dickensian one? Well…they have