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?

Civil service usually considers term time only requests, I know people who do this.

We used so much annual leave in those early years for hospital appointments, children being ill, unexpected nursery closures, sports days etc.
No chance to buy holiday and one of us only has 25 days annual leave after 20 years in a role. We have taken unpaid parental leave, but only a maximum of 18 weeks per child.

so if you can buy leave and have 30 days each sounds doable.

Normally you get 30 days if you’ve been there a while, or the pay is low, or the job is stressful. You might not get a choice about taking 3 days of leave for Christmas. These are all things I have experienced in the world of work.

My mum is a teacher, and always tried to encourage me to get into it as I'd 'have all the holidays'. It should be noted that she wasn't a teacher when we were small children, and qualified about 30 years ago so I think that she underestimates how difficult it is to balance teaching with small children.
I work in local government and have explained to her at length why having flexibility is worth waaay more than just having the holidays 'off'.
I can work from home whenever I want/need to. Obviously I don't work with my kids at home, but the odd hour of them in front of a film if a club is cancelled is super helpful.
I can chose my hours to a degree. If I need to do the school run, I can start work at 9.10 or if I can get in earlier I can also leave earlier.
I can build up flexi-time which essentially gives me extra holiday time.
My role doesn't really require cover, so I can usually take a day of flexi at short notice if a child is ill.
I have almost never had to miss a school event like sports day because I am allowed to take leave during the school day. Same applies to inset days or if half term fell on a different week between schools.
When I'm on holiday, I'm not expected to do any work or come into work for any reason. I also don't do any work in the evening or at weekends.
My husband and I share the school holidays between us, with the occasional grandparent help or other club. It can be tricky sometimes, but it's what the majority of the population does so it's obviously possible.

There’s a good Facebook group that will have answers to your questions. It’s called Life after teaching - Exit the classroom and thrive.

Go and work at a local council somewhere. You can be inefficient, rude to customers and do as little work as possible. And never, ever have to go above and beyond, whether that's the hours you work or for your clients. Zero stress because there's zero accountability.

Or maybe this is just my local council.

Never mind the holidays.
Do you have any idea how well protected you are as a teacher.
Your pension is gold plated
Your pay progression is set
Maternity leave is good
Holidays are doable but don't forget the other bemefits

When I retuned to FT employment when my children were around 10 to 12 it was difficult to juggle child care during school holidays. At the time I always thought teaching would be a great profession due to not having to work during the school holidays.

There was no summer clubs either so my parents, in-laws and my lovely gran were a great help - OH, who worked shifts and could help, was a total twat and struggled to take care of himself let alone two energetic girls.

Former teacher here. I have a much better work life balance now with normal holiday allowance (I have 25+bank hols+can buy a week). In my experience working part-time just means you do normal job full-time hours but for much less pay. It's a novelty to be able to choose when you have holiday as well. Birthdays off!

My maternity pay as a teacher has been less than most other professionals I know. A lot of places now give 6 months full pay. So the argument about maternity is rubbish. You also can't tack holiday on to mat leave as a teacher (but you can use SPL to get paid in the holidays).

I don't recognise working holidays as a teacher, I just don't do it.

I work for a large private company. We get 30 days plus bank holidays, plus option to buy a week. I have a holiday approx every 8- 10 weeks. 1x 2 week hol & rest 1 week with a couple days to spare. Plus we have option of compressed. So I do a 70 HR fortnight. & Buy a week's hol. 39 hrs one week 31 the next so a nice day off every other week. It's loads of hols.

I work in a school (full time, all year round) and I get 20 days plus 8 bank holidays. I wouldn't have moved from term time only if my husband didn't work from home as we still need some adult supervision in the holidays.

I got a term time job originally because I was fed up of the stress of booking school holiday annual leave (which everyone wanted) and if you don't get it, the stress of finding a holiday club with hours long enough to fit around work, or DH and I would request to juggle our hours so one drops off and one picks up.

If you don't like teaching but want term time only, then there are lots of non-teaching roles especially in secondary schools. Might not quite have the same level of pay and some do require additional qualifications, but areas like Pastoral, careers, SEND all have student contact.

30 days tends to be earned with seniority (so DH has 30days, after 20 years with the company and being a director/board member). No option to buy holiday and often struggles to take the 30 days because it has to fit around quarter ends/year ends and other team members holidays. I believe it is pretty rare for anyone to have much more than 20+BH as a new/junior employee these days?

If there is a university near you, you could try to get a job in administration there. The pay won't be brilliant, but my place gives everyone 34 days (including bank holidays and mandatory closure days, which tend to be round Easter and Xmas), and 41 days for people on higher grades. The only issue would be that if you worked in anything around admissions, you wouldn't be able to take late August off.

Maternity pay is dire for teachers. Plus you can’t tack annual leave on the end so you lose out there as well and when it’s summer hols etc those six weeks count against your leave even though you would have been off anyway.

@ClassicStripe it is not 'dire'. Teachers get 18 weeks of occupational maternity before they drop down to SMP for 21 weeks. That is incredibly generous. Most people get the statutory minimum which is 90% of their average weekly earnings for the first six weeks, and then SMP of £184.03 per week for the the next 33 weeks.

Pension is not gold plated at all. Pay progression is not set nor portable. Holidays (unpaid leave) is good but working when unpaid isn't a benefit.

I’m not a teacher but work in a term time only nursery…so don’t even have the OK pay. I’m fed up and want to do something else but no idea what.

If all the teachers who are counting the days until the next half-term or whose hearts are not 100% in it quit teaching, there would be virtually none left. It always astonishes me when people blithely tell teachers they should quit for that reason. The recruitment and retention crisis is dire enough already without encouraging the departure of the thousands and thousands who are no doubt hanging in there by a thread.

Having a competent teacher who's not loving it is a lot better than not having a qualified teacher at all!

Pensions have changed a lot in recent years. They used to pay out at 60, and could be taken from 55. New teachers will be waiting till 67/68 for theirs.
Mat leave doesn't compare well to civil service ML that I've heard about.

Yep. After 25 years in teaching, dh quit as deputy head and moved to a fairly high level admin job in a university. He took a significant pay cut to do it, but it saved his sanity and possibly his health. It's an absolute piece of cake compared with teaching, and he gets a pretty decent holiday allowance because in addition to the statutory holiday allowance the uni is closed for more days around public holidays.

I get 32.5 days leave plus bank hols and the option to buy a week. Also do compressed hours so get every other Friday off which is another 25 days off a year without loosing any pay. I homework most of the time, only going into the office occasionally for team days or supplier meetings. I work for the civil service so pay not has high as private sector but the other perks make up for it.

I think my last school was run by someone who believed in perpetual revolution. Everything had to be redone every year. There was always something new. No recycling of plans because we were constantly in a new year zero. Everything that went before was letting the kids down and we needed to do it in the new way.

And as about 1/3 of the teachers left every year, there was always lots of new meat who would fall in with it through fear and inexperience.

How is that helpful?

I left teaching last year and haven’t looked back. In my experience the grass is definitely greener, even without the long holidays