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?

Or ‘other’ people should be made to do a year teaching before they complain about teachers

Teachers pensions are still much better than most else out there.

This was aimed as a reply 🤦🏻‍♀️

Not in my experience. If they want you out they simply bully you out

Hmm, well, it's a CA pension with a NPA of 67.
Progression onto UPS is at the discretion of the school.
Maternity pay is not generous and you don't accrue holiday as you would in other professions.
Any absence for emergency leave puts pressure on colleagues and can result in a loss of earnings.

It doesn't look that great when written down.

Runningribbit · Today 10:57

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

What a silly comment. I think anyone in any job should be allowed to complain about their job. In any case, if you think teachers would find other jobs harder, why aren't the tens of thousands who have quit flocking back to the profession? They definitely aren't btw.

…or ‘other’ people should spend a year teaching so they can protest about teaching? Got to be a reason for teachers leaving in their droves. You might be one of those to ‘plug’ the gap 🤔

Teachers know the benefits and they are still leaving in their droves. What does that tell you?

Teachers do know their benefits but I don't think they realise HOW much better they are than others.
Employers pay 28.68% into the teacher pension. Compared to c13-14% for TAs and other support staff. Ask most people in industry what they get.
That is gold plated guys. Not as impressive as police admittedly but their own contributions are often less.
Teachers tend to go up from M1 to M2 etc so long as they meet their appraisal targets. And pay goes up each year even if you don't go up a point. That's not always the case in industry.
People have sneered that it's not gold plated and they might have to keep working til the same age as everyone else are missing my point. You genuinely don't realise how good it is compared to most people.
That said I think schools are underfunded and teachers have far more demands on them than in the past.

It's not like with like to compare teacher and TA pensions is it - if teachers weren't teachers they wouldn't be TAs.

Teachers tend to go up from M1 to M2 etc so long as they meet their appraisal targets

Not in primary, and by m6 that's it unless somewhere is willing to give you UPS.

The pension is decent but being eroded from the T&Cs many signed up for.

Teachers tend to go up from M1 to M2 etc so long as they meet their appraisal targets. And pay goes up each year even if you don't go up a point. That's not always the case in industry.

Yes, we know. Why on earth would you assume that non-teachers are aware of these things and teachers aren't? We're not idiots. We do know people in other jobs. The benefits of being a teacher are a large part of the reason that many people stay in teaching in spite of the downsides. Unfortunately, they are increasingly not enough to keep people in teaching.

As others said most no teacher jobs is 20 to 25 days holiday plus Bank Holidays. And if part time get it prorated.

You just have to make it work.

Teachers aren't stupid and many of us have worked outside of teaching, you know. I don't understand this attitude amongst so many people that teachers have no knowledge of the world outside schools. I don't have a single colleague - and there's over 100 of us working in my school - who hasn't done another job outside of teaching either before becoming a teacher or during a break from teaching. We also have partners, friends and family members who aren't teachers. We don't live in some kind of weird teacher bubble our whole lives!

The TPS is an amazing benefit, but do bear in mind how big our compulsory contributions are - this is a real burden for many younger teachers who are still paying back student loans and trying to save to get on the property ladder. Knowing you've got a big chunk going into your pension pot is all very well, but if that means you're struggling to pay the rent now, then it really doesn't have the same attraction as it might do for someone in their forties.

Yes we go up the pay scale every year for the first few years, but once you get to M6, you have to go through the threshold to UPS and then there are only 3 levels of UPS pay to go through before you've maxed out your salary as a classroom teacher at just under £50k. Therefore, while you can progress up the ladder fairly quickly, you stagnate after 15 years or so of teaching with no opportunity to increase your pay outside of taking on additional responsibility. There are no bonuses, there is no performance related pay, etc.

Considering the qualifications we need to have, the skill and responsibility level of our job, and the amount of hours we work, I don't think a career maximum salary of £50k is that good a deal. Yes the pension is good. But that's about it.

Honestly I think the pension is the only good bit.

I'm a bit on the fence with the holidays.

The benefits often aren't worth the stress of the job.

PP makes a good point that you can’t always take hols when you want to. If you’re in a small team and all parents, it won’t be approved for everyone to take the same school holidays. You have to work it out. If you’re unhelpful about it, it will be noted if you have a bad attitude, though obviously circumstances are taken into account. You can ask but not demand. Holiday can be refused if there’s not enough cover to do the job.

I wasn't going to contribute to this one, but I can't let that comment stand.

The pension is fine as it is now, but there has already been a significant change since I joined (and many minor, less impactful changes, which, however, still meant less will be paid out in the end). It means we now contribute more for far less reward. Also bear in mind that this is not a saved pot and all goes to contributing towards current retirees, NOT our actual future pension, and the scheme is not deemed viable on a regular basis, so who know what we will actually get in 30 years' time.

Pay is not portable, meaning if you change jobs you may end up with lower pay and have to jump through all the hoops again. Appraisal targets are often unreasonable in the hope that some will not reach them and progress every year (I have had targets of predicting grades with 99% accuracy and of having 100% of students getting their target grade or above, both of which are not fully in my hands to control). Don't get me started on the hoops to go through to UPS, which has been denied to me for almost 10 years despite evidence and if I hadn't had a lovely HR woman fight my corner (and be bullied out later, partially as a result of this) and prove the head was lying to get out of paying me UPS then I'd likely still be on mainscale.

I do not, however, like the point others make about the cap being UPS3. In any job there is a maximum if you insist on not taking on more responsibility, so I see progression to head of department, assistant head etc. all through the lens of pay progression.

All that said, the points are moot. OP, you have a husband who can provide the childcare. If you find a different career you may find that you don't need the holidays bar physical childcare - emotionally, you will likely be far more relaxed (the job I did for a while felt like a holiday in comparison).

I couldn't have put this better myself. Absolutely spot on!

I left teaching after 7 years in 2023 and haven’t looked back since. I get 26 days AL plus bank holiday, can WFH 2/3 days a week and I get flexi time too which is game changing.

I don’t have kids yet, but figured there are far more people with children who are NOT teachers than are, and somehow everybody else manages…

I genuinely haven’t missed the school holidays. Usually by the time they arrived I was on my knees and would be ill with some kind of bug, but now I can take holidays when I want and when suits us (plus the bonus of it being literally half the price).

dear RunningRibbit - oh, you did give me a little laugh! I'd challenge you to try teaching for yourself - especially in a major inner city - before you start advising teachers to try real work in a real work setting! I worked in publishing and advertising for seven years before I entered teaching & did 32years hard in inner London schools. I can tell you that teaching - at all levels of seniority - was much, much, much harder and the hours (including up to half of school holidays) longer than in my experiences at both secretarial and executive levels in commerce.

Have you actually found a job offering those holiday terms? Because in my experience, that amount of holiday isn’t common.

standard I’ve found is around 25 days plus bank holidays. If you’re lucky it goes up 1 day every 5 years of service. I did manage to get to 30 days plus buy 5 days, but I had worked there 10 years to earn that

It depends a lot of what sort of team you are moving into as if you can cope with it.

I get 26 days holiday but work in a team where I am the only one with school aged children. Which means I basically get the pick of what school holidays I want to take off. Other teams have several people with school age children and have issues booking holidays. Just because you have the holiday doesn't mean you will be able to take it when you want.

As your DH is a teacher you don't have to worry about childcare cover for holidays but I so would consider buying holiday is more expensive than using childcare over school holidays. It works out better for me for my DS to do a week of summer camp than me to buy the extra week's holiday. I can then afford to do things with him on the time we do have together. I wouldn't automatically go for buying more holiday over 30 days.

Life outside of teaching will probably give you the benefit of compressed hours. A 4 day week plus my very generous leave allowance, and purchasing a week means I’ve got all but 3 weeks of school hols covered.

Plus a day off every single week to myself. I do work for a very flexible employer and if I wanted one I’d be able to get a term time contract with no loss of pay.

Wow what do you do? I am looking for ideas....

I work in Human Resources. I’m public sector. Used to be charity sector and leave wasn’t as generous. Getting told by our new staff that we have room for improvement as some of them have less leave now coming from the private sector to join us. Annual leave allowance and flexible working are the most important factors for me now. More companies are going to have to improve their flexible working offering due to changes in legislation and expectations when recruiting. It’s going to be an interesting year I think for test cases.

I would be able to change my working pattern though and work the extra hours through the term weeks so that school holidays were covered. I’m actually writing all the possible scenarios now as part of our preparation for the changes.