To ask teachers if you just accept the inflated holiday prices?

[justoneofthoseyearsagain]

Is there any other way to bring costs down? Looking at a UK break at Christmas and it’s £1600 - the following week it is £600. Obviously not much you can do but does sting a bit!

No one is whinging. Someone asked a question and people answered. Everyone has said that it’s just part of the deal. No one is whinging.

I will always be tied to school holidays too op, because my dh's company employs parents with school age children we are restricted to company shut down during school holidays. The complication was that two of the wives worked together elsewhere, but they weren't allowed to take holidays at the same time!

You can do the off season places. City breaks in the week, beach resorts in the winter or spring. Rome in August is traditionally quiet because of the heat especially the first two weeks. That's cheaper and it just means getting up early and not going out in afternoon, it's still great.

Do a less well known theme park like Phantasiland ( Germany) rather than Disney in the holidays especially if it doesn't coincide with theirs.

Technically yes. The salary isn't pro rata even though you are paid for hours worked ( unlike support staff).

It's swings and roundabouts. I can get much cheaper holidays in term time but my annual leave allowance is 5 weeks which is less than your summer break alone.

Tbf parents who aren’t willing to take their kids on holiday during term time have to pay inflated costs. I don’t like mine missing school so yeah we pay inflated costs like everyone else.

They are not paid. Our wage is based on 195 working days across the year, it is split across 12 months. We don’t get paid for the holidays.

It’s funny I was thinking about this last week .

I typed out a big list of where people go/ what they do but it felt far outing .

I will say the single t a s as a rule , don’t go away at all , only the ones with a partner footing the bill manage it .

also , for a big birthday in a few years , I am really keen to do a few weeks in Canada. I have priced up hotels , flights , food , sightseeing, car rentals ect . The price difference between going in the summer holidays and a later time in the year , is well over half my wage .

it gave me food for thought.

You don’t think teachers pay for nursery full time? I was paying for 4 days per week (I’m 0.8 hours) 52 weeks per year. No term time only options in the better nurseries around here.

My top tips for cheaper holidays are:

1. go at Easter
2. go the last week(s) of August (when GCSE results are in) I’ve found that a great way to save money. Some counties are back at school already and lots of families need to be home/around for exam results.

What else can we do?

Now I don't mind because I have school age dc so have to go in the holidays anyway. Once they're older I imagine it will grate a little more!

But I get 6 weeks off with my kids and don't have the headache of childcare in the holidays like a lot of other women my age so it's swings and roundabouts.

I'm school support staff and it's just part of the job. You get more leave but its not flexible. Sometimes that's great. Like at Christmas when there is no arguments in the team about who does the Christmas day shift.

It's also good when you have children but lots of teachers work before and after they have children that need childcare so there's no cost to offset for them.

But now I don't have such a childcare need, the unpaid leave and lack of flexibility isn't enough to keep me in the job going forward. Support staff have different contracts so our pay is pro rata.

No whingeing here. Promise.

At the moment I don’t save as children are still preschool but in a few years I will

Could you take a week of unpaid parental leave? We’re expecting our first baby in a few weeks and my teacher husband plans to use a week of unpaid parental leave (the one where you can take up to 18 weeks before the child is 18) so we can have a cheaper holiday during the nursery years. We want to go to Greece and it was coming in at £6k in half-term, but only £3k if we go 2 weeks before. Even being on UPS3 with a TLR, my husband won’t lose £3k in wages with one week off so we should still make a good saving.

Pisses me right off. Friends of mine in nhs/ council roles with pretty healthy leave allowances get to stay in nicer places for lower prices. And they get to go on more holidays. No one really seems that bothered about taking kids out during term time.

Yes I know I chose to be a teacher etc, but dh didn't really get much say, neither did the kids! Having said that, I was 22 when I went into teaching and not really planning on it being a career, so I want thinking about how it would affect me long term. And holidays pre kids were relatively cheap for dh and I.

I was also going to mention taking unpaid parental leave if it works out that the loss of pay is worth the lower cost of the holiday.

I've not done this myself yet but I'm planning to, and know of other teachers who have used unpaid parental leave to go on holiday to avoid inflated prices and very busy, crowded periods at some destinations.

I don’t know … wouldn’t that be really disruptive? 😧 I have all exam classes.

I can't see many schools allowing that either. They'd have to pay for cover for the classes. Other colleagues, having to pick up the slack, would be livid. Parents, justifiably, would be annoyed.

Yeah my school is pretty generous when it comes to to things like leave of absence for nativities etc but no way would they allow a week for a holiday!

We’ve always flown by Ryanair or whoever was cheapest to the cheapest destination that’s warm enough. Then we get hotels and or Airbnb’s. This way, we’re not particularly conscious of school holiday inflation.

You couldn’t be more wrong. Teachers get pretty much the same as most people, around 5 weeks paid, and the rest of the time off is UNPAID, but their salary is equally divided over 12 months.

I can’t believe that people still believe teachers have all the time off paid. I’m neither a teacher nor related to one, but have known this for years

We aim for places or accommodation that doesn't attract families although I appreciate that advice isn't helpful if you do have children.

Well it’s a legal right all parents have so I don’t see why schools can discriminate and say their employees who are parents can’t do this.

Honestly, my DH spends his life basically raising other people’s children because so many parents are unfit and unable of doing a decent job. Anyone begrudging him a week of unpaid leave which he is legally entitled to needs to spend a week in his shoes. And he more than picks up the slack for other colleagues.

He teaches primary so no exams to consider. He may well feel differently about it if he was teaching Yr10-13 of course.

@RosiePH secondary schools would literally descend into chaos if they allowed this.

There are 100 teaching staff at my school. There are 39 weeks. If we had say 2-3 members of staff off each week on unpaid leave, as well as regular absence due to illness, and trips, the cover costs would soar. Budgets are already shot to pieces.
It costs enough in cover to manage ordinary staff absence and residential trips to the extent that we have had to stop running DOfE as we just could not justify the disruption and the cover.

@fundbund it’s a legal right all parents are entitled to though. Understandably, schools aren’t going to want to be advertising it or encouraging it because it will be disruptive if everyone did it. However, not everyone can afford a week of unpaid leave so everyone won’t be doing it anyway.

https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/advice/conditions-of-service/maternity/parental-leave-england.html

But our understanding has been that the request can’t be declined without sufficient reasoning so not just ‘it’s disruptive’, and they could suggest alternative dates which they need to do in a specific timeframe of you making the request.

I get that it might be easier and more flexible in a primary school though.

I don’t really think it’s any different to a teacher taking paternity leave in the middle of term.