To think that this makes no sense at all and completely defeats the point of it?

[WineInMyBelly]

I have 2 children with SEN, both children attend a specialist SEN school. I’ve made a flexible working request in work (I don’t work in education. I work as a marketing manager for a global company) to work term time school hours only. My flexible working request has been approved. But now my line manager and HR are both saying that the term time/school holidays will be based on the school holidays for LA schools in our area and not my children’s specific SEN school. The school holidays for my children’s school vary slightly from the school holidays for the local LA schools though! I’ve queried this with my manager and HR but they won’t budge on it at all. I had assumed a term time contract meant that I would be working when my children are in school and off when they are not in school but obviously that won’t happen now! AIBU to think this makes no sense at all and completely defeats the point of me having requested term time working?

Contact ACAS first as they may be able to give you direction on exactly what to say in your next conversation with HR.

Could you approach your children's school and ask for them to consider some alignment of holidays with LA ones in the future? Other parents may be struggling too, if they have to cover differing holidays for different kids.
Could you take sick leave for some of the time?
It does seem unreasonable of your employer to dictate when you can take annual leave.

As they have agreed term only and they are not education themselves I cant see how it impacts them what your term dates are.

Surely this would benefit the team if term dates are different (if they to have children) as there wouldn't be such a cross over with people wanting to book school holidays.

HR and my manager just keep saying because it’s their “policy” (but they haven’t actually given me a copy of that policy) and because “that’s how term time contracts work, they are based on the LA term dates”.

What business justification did they give for denying the appeal?

edit: sorry posted at the same time as you replied to a similar question. It sounds like they may be relying on consistency with how term time contacts work. I think you need specific advice here. Consistency with other contracts may be a genuine business need in this situation.

I wonder however if your “flexible working request” could now be to be able to swap working and non-working days/weeks. Effectively you’ve got your term time contract, and now you want further flexibility… But I’d get some good advice before trying to pull that one.

I'd be soooo p....ed off if I was in the wider marketing team.

They've made accommodations as required, perhaps they want you to leave.

Go to them with exactly how many weeks/days don’t align, if it’s 3+ weeks I’d definitely be pushing for them to align completely or at least better than that, I’d say anything less than 2 weeks you might be best attempting to juggle childcare those weeks, term time contracts are like gold dust and it’s absolutely not worth losing everything for a few weeks.

OP it's likely a lot of posters won't realise you can't use holiday clubs or wrap around care when you have children with SEN needs, so the answers of making arrangements or using childcare the rest of the time are well meant.
There are a handful of SEN holiday clubs/wrap around but they are usually like 1 day a week or a couple mornings etc.

I would actually raise this further, as long as the actual days would be the same and wouldn't mean your taking more weeks than state school, the business needs have already been met in terms of resource.
Do your HR/manager actually know that SEN childcare isn't really an accessible thing so you'd have them at home on your working days?

I understand your frustration, but I think they have been very accommodating so far.

@Dontpokethebearnow, I did speak to my manager and HR during the process of making my flexible working request about the fact that I can’t use holiday clubs for my SEN children so they are fully aware of that but they still won’t budge.

Sounds like it’s a ‘computer says no’ scenario for your boss, have you asked them about using parental leave for the 3.5 weeks? Otherwise ask them what they expect you to do if you can’t use holiday clubs and can’t have the time off, do you bring the children to the office with you or tie them to a table leg at home?

Are they generally happy with you, you happy there, performance reviews go well etc. I'd be wondering if they were trying to make it impossible on purpose (but I'm a cynic!)

I'm not an expert or had experience of this but:

They aren't technically accepting your flexible working request if you specified in the process that it would be dates for a specific school. They can refuse the request if they can prove the business needs would be impacted.
As they've agreed to the 'time' as in actual absence they would need to prove the business needs aren't met if it's within your specific dates. Basically go back and ask what business impact it has it with those dates and has to be the state dates when they were aware from the outline you needed specific ones.

You shouldn't have to but can you submit family leave for the 4 weeks not covered?

Hi OP, I sense your frustration.
Does your absence to align with your children being off impact on the service that you work in?
If so, I can understand your line manager's POV.
If it wouldn't affect the service, you have every right to be upset.
Have you had an opportunity to discuss further?

Speak to Acas or your Union. I can't work out why your work would be saying this. If other people eventually wanted term-time only work too, it would surely be beneficial for them to have people working different term times and not working different holidays, as this would mean less people were on leave at once overall.

The only thing I wonder is if they want to have set TTO periods so that if they eventually get other workers who want TTO they can plan TTO times with less work. I mean obviously if it's just you it probably doesn't matter, but if there were more TTO workers with the same holidays, they would need to plan term times with less work load which would mean they needed definite times.

Totally ridiculous. They “won’t budge” - but why? What difference will it make to the business that you’d be off slightly different weeks from local schools?

Take sick leave?! That’s terrible advice! That’s not what it’s there for, it won’t take very much for OP’s manager and/or HR to put two and two together and the OP would likely face disciplinary action.

Quote the Equality Act 2010. Reasonable adjustment because you have disabled children. If there is no business reason why you shouldn’t be allowed the time off they have no case.

YANBU Your work are being ridiculous

When you call ACAS ask if this could be an example of indirect discrimination. The reason your children don't attend a local authority school is due to disability, therefore not making an adjustment to different term dates could be indirect disability discrimination.

OP do the dates you need include specific busy periods like year end or any other reason from a business point of view that would make your specific dates more difficult than the LA dates?
If not, they are being petty and using the guise of being accommodating when really they haven't.
Have you had any issues at work where this is a way of making things difficult for you?
Definitely speak to ACAS and your union.
Do your children have appointments that you will need to attend and therefore also need some annual leave included in your contract?
I am sorry they are being so petty. I would also speak to your colleagues that will be absorbing the work, have any of them put in a reservation about your changes?

I think they should accommodate this for OP, but I also can imagine there being a business reason for following the usual 'local' termdates. If one of my team asked to go term-time only one of the mitigations to make it work for us would be that for us - even though our work is entirely unrelated to school term dates - we always quieten down in school holidays because we're a team that services internal colleagues and so many other people are on leave in any given school holiday. It's a very noticeable downshift in our queries. As I say, I would personally want to accommodate OP on this if I were her manager, but it really would be easier for me to have someone who didn't work our local school holidays than someone who worked the same number of weeks but at different times - it might not just be petty that they're saying no.

Insist on a copy of the policy. Drop the phrases 'constructive dismissal' and 'employment tribunal' into conversation, because that honestly looks to be where they're pushing you.

Where is the children's father? I get that you are a single parent, but surely some of this time could be with him?

She already did. There are 3 and a half weeks that her children will be off when she will have to be working. So nearly a month that she will have to find additional cover for, not just a few days.