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?

Most working parents are not teachers. DH and I are not. We do this in the holidays :

Each take 2 weeks off in the summer, overlapping 1 week so that we can have time together. Having a few overlapping days off at Christmas and possibly 1-2 days at Easter.

The rest of the school holidays are covered individually by either me or DH. We also use holidays clubs 1-2 weeks a year and are fortunate that family will cover a week a year too.

It does mean that I have no leave left for myself. I can’t take any time off to do anything I want to do, it’s always for childcare.

As the DC get to teenage years I hope to be able to wfh a few days with them pottering about or seeing friends, which means I can spread leave better and have a bit more to myself.

I wouldn’t stay in teaching just for the holidays. It’s possible to manage without, and your DC will benefit more from you being in a job you enjoy.

I'm a teacher and I'm pretty sure you'd be better off in a cushy LA job with similar pension to teaching and your 30+8+5 = 43 = 7 weeks holiday a year.

I only get 20 days plus bh so I take 2-3 weeks unpaid leave. It’s the only way I can cover the school holidays.
Most families we know use family or holiday clubs to cover.

Easter hols were spent doing GCSE catch up classes, Christmas hols were spent marking mock exams, half terms were spent coming up with schemes of work and activities. Summer hols were spent prepping for Autumn term.

What I really like about holidays now is that I get to take them off!

You can't guarantee you'd get 0.6 or whatever PT option you wanted in school anyway.

My employer is currently playing hardball and seems to prefer the idea of me leaving than accomodating a very small flexiworking request, and I am in a subject, and place, with a massive shortage of staff.

Agree with this. It will get easier if it’s the childcare that is getting you down. DD is 13 and DS 10. No school runs with DD, she takes herself to dentist/doctor’s appointments, I can leave her alone when she’s ill from school or has an Inset.

Edit: misread your OP. Realised you haven’t had children yet. If you’re not enjoying teaching when you haven’t got children I would leave. Teaching is a struggle with a young family. I’m coming out the other side now … although when GCSEs start next year I may go back to crying in a dark room!

I only get 20 days plus bank holidays,I work in the evenings,dh during the day is how we do it.

How about vice versa- all non teachers have a year teaching. At the least it would stop a lot of daft complaints from parents.

If you don't have children highly unlikely you'll get the time off. How will you cope over the 6 weeks when he is home alone?

In my public sector role I started with I think 27 days hol plus bank hols, additional five days hol after five years, and the option to buy a minimum of three days unpaid too. TOIL/flexi policy in place, hybrid working (since C19), decent wages finally after 10+ years.

To be honest, in some ways I feel like I get more holiday now than I did teaching. I get 25 + BH, flexitime allowing me to save up extra days, and it will rise to 30 this holiday year (starting in May).

We do have grandparent support so the average half-term, I'll take 3 days off and DD spends 2 with GPs.

Then I usually take a total of 2-3 weeks off in summer, 2 weeks in holiday club, and 2 weeks of GPs and now DD is older we can WFH with her there in quiet periods. In August there's so little going on that it's definitely possible to pause work occasionally if she needs us but she's mostly happy to play whilst we get on.

That leaves Easter and Christmas, BHs cover a lot of those, we take our remaining AL (sometimes we have to alternate a bit and have different days off) she goes to GPs and if my stepdaughter is around we might pay her for a day of babysitting whilst we're WFH.

Bear in mind that holiday in other sectors means holiday. No popping into work to set up your office for the new term or sharpen all the pencils. No planning or catching up on marking. You switch off your laptop and your phone and don't think of it until you're back at work.

Sign me up! I wanted to be a teacher and never got into it and I think about it a lot. I would love a year trial 😂

Teacher -what ? '' PAST'' is never a VERB. Do you mean ''PASSED''?

I agree

@Greywhippet i have done teaching, it was much easier than the job I do now, as long as I planned all my lessons. Once you have planned for a syllabus, until it changes you plan once then use it, with tweaks for years or until the curriculum changes.

My job now is non bloody stop, stressful but does pay a hell of a lit more than teaching!

I was a teacher for over 30 years. Had a few years off when I had my kids(4 ) then went back just after my youngest was born. I was offered a 3 day a week job in the older 3 kids school. Found a local child minder who looked after the baby. Stayed working there for over 20 years till I retired. For me it was perfect as the kids would come in with me before school and my husband was at home after school. I was lucky that I was in a large primary school with excellent planning which was shared out through the year group. Most of this was completed during PPA. I’d usually mark during lunchtime and stay for an hour after school. Rarely took work home. Would pop in one day during school holidays to sort out my classroom.
Think it varies so much from school to school. I’d think about changing schools before giving up.
I loved having the school holidays to spend time at home with the kids. They did attend some school holiday camps but it was trough choice not necessity.

I think there are some many flexible ways to work now that the big bonus of teaching for mothers (holidays) is starting to be outweighed by the inflexibility.
WFH doesn't fit with having a small dc around, but a later primary age or older dc can come home to someone in the house rather than go to after school care. Some people do compressed hours and get an day off with no reduction in salary.

We struggle a lot with the holidays I’m not going to sugar coat it OP! We try to spend Christmas and a two weeks in the summer together as a family. Otherwise we try to alternate, Easter I do one week DH does the other week. We have to pay 1 week in Feb, 1 week May, 4 weeks in Summer and occasionally a few days in the Oct or around Christmas. Summer for 3 days (4 weeks) for two kids was £650. So probably in total it’s an extra ~£1k a year you might need to pay out in childcare.

I have teacher friends who don’t work massively in the holidays but they do work their butts off during the term. I think it’s down to the school and leadership. If you still like teaching and it’s not just the holidays keeping you, maybe a change in schools / leadership is what you need? Or if the other job sounds amazing jump, try it for a while, teaching will always be there!

I worked for HCC. Like any council they can tell you how they would like it to work, but a lot is down to the role and the discretion of your manager. If you work in a team with a lot of other parents you will be competing with them for the time off and it may not be granted if your manager deems it necessary for you to be in for operational reasons. I joined them because my DC were no longer at school and I wanted to go on holiday during term time. My role changed once I was there and I couldn’t take time off in June or July. I was also unable to carry over annual leave.

Staying in teaching just for the holidays is a really bad idea. If you don’t enjoy the job, you need to find something else. Your life will be miserable & it’s not fair on everyone else at the school.

Unless you absolutely hate teaching and can't stick the job any longer then you will regret leaving and losing all those holidays.

Of course the terms times are hard work but the opportunity to spend so much time with your children should not be overlooked to easily.

There are very few jobs that offer 30 days holiday even after decades of service and also buying extra week of holiday is often not an option - these are not standard benefits with every work contract.....

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Teacher -what ? '' PAST'' is never a VERB. Do you mean ''PASSED''?

If you're referring to the title of the thread, she means she can't get past the idea of losing the holidays. Past is correct in this context.

Teaching is one of the few professions in which staff are expected to be passionate, and to care. Even HCPs are not required to adhere to such emotionally-invested standards.

Educators are apparently required to be invested in students' mental health, to deliver pastoral care, and to know where the line is drawn between what we are able to do and what is strictly the domain of professional counsellors, without any qualifications in this department. We're expected to contibute to student 'enrichment': in my day, we were told 'there's a great play on at X date that's relevant to the material we're studying - try to go and see it. To cap it all we are expected to show 'passion' for our specialist subject, and it seems to me that more value is ascribed to passion than actual subject knowledge.

We don't require passion and care from our other professions: lawyers, civil service, police, dentists, accountants, librarians, archivists, even necessarily our GPs. But for teaching professionals it seems to be a prerequiste of people's (wholly unrealistic) expectations. Also, along with the police, it seems educators are less respected than other professionals. University lecturers, for example, are the least well-paid in Europe.

No wonder people are leaving the profession in droves.

I struggled through for 12 years with limited leave and 3 kids
Issues I found with holiday childcare
Many local affordable schemes do not cover work hours. So start at 9.30/10 and finish at 4.
Childcare that is decent costs. I used supercomputer type places which were several hundred quid a week and usually involved a long drive before work.
Most difficult is inset days, there is no childcare for that so you will use precious days of leave for this, worse when your kids are in different schools.
The idea of sharing childcare during holidays seems like a good idea but in reality you are using your precious few days alone with your kids.
After a few years I used to book and pay forevery minute of childcare I needed at the beginning of the year.

That unfortunately is how being parents of young children works- you don't get to take lots of time off together as you need to maximise how much childcare you can cover yourselves