Leaving teaching and getting past the holidays? How do you do with 30 days off? Is it better now?

[Se12345]

I feel like the only reason I would continue is because once I have kids soon I can go part time 3 days and have all the half terms.

or I can move and do something else with about 30 days off in the year plus bank holidays and option to buy one week?

Teaching is not family friendly. You're not going to be able to 'have the holidays'. So many colleagues leave once they have DC for this reason: teaching is inflexible and the workload, even if part time, too overwhelming. Once you have DC, it can be upsetting that you're making big sacrifices in terms of time, working long evenings and weekends (and during the holidays!), and being your sparkliest professional best for the benefit of other people's DC while your own get the exhausted, stressed, wrung-out version of you.

Half terms are only 3 weeks of the year where we live so split between you both (assuming 2 parents) isn't much at all. Also May HT is also the BH week. It's more the summer holidays and Easter that are an issue for childcare.

Even the latter is not a given now as academies have the ability to set holiday dates. It used to be dictated by the council. I think the academies think they’re doing everyone a favour by potentially getting cheaper holidays but don’t think about teachers who have children or families who have primary and secondary aged children. I have colleagues who are off the week after their children in both February and October. It’s daft!

One caveat I would add about holiday camps is that a lot of them do not run useful hours. Even with extended hours, the best we have locally is 8-6.

Where I am, the hours are dreadful. 10-2 is normal fgs.

I have BH plus 30 days plus the option to buy days plus I theoretically could take unpaid parental leave although I never did. There are very few limits at work on when we can take leave so things slow down in August and almost completely shut down over Christmas but we aren't public facing so it doesn't matter. I have an incredibly generous package, it is very unusual, DH works in the public sector and has less generous standard holidays, although he did take unpaid parental leave when the DC were small.

The legal minimum requirement for annual leave is 28 days but that can include bank holidays so that then becomes just 4 weeks.

As for how we managed it? We only took annual leave in the school holidays, DH and I took the bulk of our holiday at different times so we could cover more of the school holidays and the kids spent approximately half of each holiday except Christmas in holiday clubs. We had no help from grandparents. We did work PT when the kids were young but that means your holiday and BH allowance reduces pro-rata so Monday is the most popular day to not work so you don't have to use up annual leave on BHs. Since the pandemic DH WFH and I'm hybrid and as the kids have got older it's been possible to WFH when they are on holiday because they don't need you all the time (in fact, now we have teenagers they sometimes cook lunch for us when we are WFH).

It depends on where you live with holiday childcare

It isn't an issue around here - loads of options - and if you have a partner, you don't need all that much holiday childcare either.

My partner works as a teacher and he will be staying. So it would mean he will be doing most the holidays alone. But I would then need to request school holidays mostly. So we can have time off together.

I work for a local authority. I get 33 days leave plus bank holidays. And I can also work overtime and take up to two days of flexi leave every 8 weeks, so potentially another 13 days! Maxed out it comes to over 10 weeks off per year, so definitely possible to find roles where this is the case. I’m not even a manager.

We're you primary or secondary?
As the times you've posted there do not reflect mu primary experience.
Most of that is completed in PPA.

So you don’t need all the holidays then, so leave teaching. Simple 🤷‍♀️ if you get a job with flexi working it’s a bonus but other than that the kids childcare would be covered and you’d have normal AL like everyone else, bonus is you can take a day or two to yourself during term time too.

I left at Christmas and I am starting a very different career path. My new role will be shift work, but working on a 5453 rota (work 5, 4 off, work 5, 3 off). I've worked out that this means I'll have 214 working days (being a teacher is 195 days as you know.) however, I will also be entitled to 25 days of leave (to take when I want!!) plus the option to purchase up to 5 additional days. Which takes my actually days in work to 184.
So although I don't get "the holidays" any more, I will actually have more time off during the year.

Well obviously you'd be fine because your partner can do the holidays.
The vast majority of us who are not teachers make do and with a mix of holiday clubs, not taking annual leave at the same time and help from relatives.
30 days plus bank holidays and buy a week is a lot more than most people get.

This definitely isn’t my experience. I’ve no idea if this means I’m doing the bare minimum or not but I seem to get everybody through their exams OK.

I now have 25 days of annual leave, 8 bank holidays and 18 days of Flexi (toil) that I can take. DD is a teen so childcare isnt an issue

It's great, I always found I worked Sundays often more of the holidays as assessments were done and had to be marked. A day getting the house sorted and running errands I couldn't fit in during term time. Then I'd be run down a bit as my body relaxed.

Now I never work weekends, can claim for any hours worked between 7am -7pm and told not to work outside of this. I can manage my own diary so if I need to take my car for its MOT, dentist appointment, hairdressers then I can just block the time out in my calendar and work around it. I WFH so can keep on top of minor household jobs whilst the kettle boils.

Term time I often do 7am -8am checking and responding to emails and setting up the work for the day, school run, nip to supermarket do a shop whilst there's actually food on the shelves instead of at the end of the day, put shopping away and slow cooker on Then work 9:15-13:00 take an hour for lunch and go for a walk/run in the daylight then work 14:00 - evening. Or I might have an early diner with DD and catch up then finish off later whilst she does her own homework/revision. Fridays I start at 09:30 and clean the house beforehand so it's sorted for the weekend.

School holidays I work 7am-3pm and by the time DD is up and dressed we then have the evening together to go to the cinema / theatre / bowling. If we want to do things during the day I just book Flexi off.

The downside is I find it a bit isolating going from talking to 150 people a day in person to just DD. And I think M better at responsive 'in the moment' jobs rather than solely admin based. My colleagues with children under 10 use wraparound care and holiday clubs though which I believe are ££££

Yes, but you wouldn’t need childcare for the planning and marking.
I know it FEELS like your holiday is being swallowed up by work, because you’re not mentally switching off, but in reality you’re not working all day every day of half term catching up with marking and planning. I probably used to spend about 6-10 hours every half term catching up with the paperwork, which can actually be done as one hour per evening.

I think all teachers should be made to work a year in a “normal” job before they can complain and protest about their jobs.

Did you work in England? Primary?
I am genuinely shocked with what you have had to do. Teaching in England seems horrific. I teach in Scotland in secondary. Never work in my holidays. Can do nursery pick ups etc. Sometimes have to mark at night but not every night. Get very good results with my pupils.

Lots of them have and lots of them leave for other jobs hence knowing the difference and being shocked at conditions for teaching currently.

There's a fab fb page Life After Teaching full of advice and people going through it. Also Adventures After Teaching. It's shockingly common.

Try a different school before leaving though, my school had a ridiculous marking policy amongst many other issues whereas DDs school just down the road and part of the same MAT don't mark any books at all they just mark end of unit assessments and live assessment during the lesson, the teacher turnover for her school is much lower and the results are better as teachers aren't shattered.

I have 30+8 with the option to buy another 5. It’s standard in my sector where I work in upper middle management (closely related to LA work). I also work FT with a 9 day fortnight. I have significantly more actual annual leave than my partner who is a teacher.

So many people come back and post how much better it is in their life after teaching and how they don't miss the holidays as every weekend feels like a holiday and they're not exhausted from performing everyday.

Yes this is what I've seen too.

20 + 8 Bank/Public holidays is the minimum for those conditioned to a five day week.

A lot of roles in schools, not just classroom assistants etc, are term time only but with the salary spread over 12 instalments.

I don't know if all councils are the same, but our local one depending on the job you do there's a lot of time during the year where it's dead and you still have to sit at your desk with nothing to do and you're not allowed on the internet or anything, and the rest of the time it's far too busy to cope. If you know anyone who works there or works in the department you'd be in I'd talk to them before applying to see if you can gauge what it's like.