AIBU to be confused about how teachers' salaries are paid?

[Mayflower282]

My friend is a teacher and I said to her the other day something along the lines of “I miss that long stretch of freedom in the summer”…she replied annoyed that “teachers are still working during the summer, prepping for next year etc, and we don’t get paid for the time off”…I’m confused by this. For example a teacher job advertised as £30k, they get 30k split over the 12 months right? Or do they only get £30k equivalent for the actual weeks they are working and this is split over the 12 months?

For the ease of complications I’ve not included tax, NI etc:

YABU - teachers only get paid for what they work, eg £30k equivalent for only 40 weeks split over the year (£30,000/52 weeks =£576 per week, and then 576*40/12 =£1,923 per month

YANBU - teacher gets £30k spilt over the year, £2500 per month

I used to agree with you but since Covid and home working started I have really felt the impact of choosing to be a teacher more, because yes we get long holidays (minus the unpaid hours I work in them), but we work long and stressful days, I have no energy left for hobbies in the evenings after co-regulating with the most tricky pupils in my class plus dealing with challenging behaviour and high noise levels each day.

In contrast, many of my friends work from home so can fit life and their own children around their work, they still have stressful jobs but they can go for a run in a lunch break/ do a school run/ flexitime around their kids, and they seem to have a much healthier balance all round, they seem so much calmer. I love my job but I’m not sure the all or nothing high stress then holidays is ideal anymore. I’m overly present for my kids in the holidays but have missed all their school milestones eg their sports days/school plays.

I’m sure some of this is a grass is always greener kind of thing though. I would be upset if my children choose to be teachers and would advise them against it.

The issue with teaching is that it is literally never done. You could always do a better lesson plan that meets the needs of 30 different kids better, you have to deal
with parents in their time windows and meet professional standards whilst dealing a client who is the exact opposite.

The problem is support staff ARE only paid pro rata. So they advertised wage is nothing like the actual wage once you deduct school holidays .

The issue with teaching is that it is literally never done. You could always do a better lesson plan that meets the needs of 30 different kids better, you have to deal
with parents in their time windows and meet professional standards whilst dealing a client who is the exact opposite.

The problem is support staff ARE only paid pro rata. So they advertised wage is nothing like the actual wage once you deduct school holidays .

I agree and am sure it must be frustrating, I’m sorry if I have come across that way.

i do think the numbers speak for themselves though, because if the holidays and pay really are so fantastic then why is everyone leaving the profession?

The other extreme is non-teachers who assume it is a very easy job which fits in around family life really well. I think it may have been once, but not any more.

I do sympathise with the holidays though, I am sure it is an absolute nightmare to sort childcare out.

@Glassfulls Sorry meant to put “agree” with your post.
Teachers leave because of conditions,not pay.
Also having 13 weeks sounds amazing but you can’t have time off outside that easily - for those things real life asks for - medical, weddings, family stuff.
Plus school holidays are full of children and very expensive. Once your kids are grown it’s no longer any sort of bonus.

I've worked a lot of different careers and I've never worked so many hours and had so few days off for such low pay as when teaching.

Until you've done it, you shouldn't speak about it.

I absolutely love my school holidays - I career changed to teaching, so I know the ‘other side’ of only getting 4/5 weeks holiday a year, and the struggles with childcare etc. It’s a huge perk to what is a wonderful job. That being said, the workload and mental load are exhausting - and it’s ok for teachers to say that. It doesn’t mean we’re saying other professions aren’t similar. And yes they don’t get the holidays. But having the holidays doesn’t mean we can’t voice our frustrations. The two can co-exist.

It’s actually dead easy to understand teaching pay tbh. If teaching is a good deal in terms of pay and conditions we’d have people queuing up to do it and very few would leave. In reality we have few wanting to do it (they need massive -bribes- bursaries) and loads leave (around 50% within 5 years). Whether we’re paid for the holiday is neither here nor there - until the government want to increase our working hours.

I love my job. But I don’t have kids and I’m willing to give up a huge proportion my personal time to it because I enjoy it. That’s not a sustainable model though, and newer teachers coming through are less willing to sacrifice / more willing to demand their employment rights are respected.

I used to complete payroll for schools - teachers are on a 52 week contract. TA's are paid for 39 weeks of term time + 4/5 weeks holiday entitlement.
So in answer to your question, teachers are paid for the school holidays.

Teachers cant have it both ways.
Either their pay is a salary that covers the holidays
Or
They are not paid for the holidays & are actually on a higher FTE level of pay

Teachers are paid OVER the holidays, not FOR them.

A teacher’s salary is calculated at 39 weeks a year + statutory paid holiday (6 weeks approx). Any remaining time is unpaid, but salary is split equally over 12 months. Your friend is correct.

Trying to compare this to a TA contract or looking at it a different way doesn't change anything.

Maternity pay is shocking, work at the DfE, 28 weeks full pay, work as a teacher, 6 weeks! And not everyone can plan when they get pregnant, took me 4 years to conceive, planning around summer holidays was not an option! I don’t understand how a fully unionised, female dominated profession has got such a poor deal.

School holidays off when kids are school age was lovely though. Plus provided you live long enough public sector pension is decent (although expensive).

This seems to cause so much
confusion. It isn’t complicated just unusual.

Teachers get paid for their directed time - 1265, plus additional time as required to fulfil their duties, which can be done at a time and place of their choice to some extent, and also their statutory holidays. This is what is divided by 12 and paid equally across the year. Schools are closed for longer than the statutory holidays and this time isn’t paid. That’s where the resentment comes from because the school holidays are sometimes, but not always, paid teacher holidays; other school holidays are unpaid non-working weeks.

Because other professions are not structured this way, the general experience of holidays from work is paid leave. Therefore, there is a general assumption that school holidays are very long periods of paid leave. They’re not. There is often resentment towards teachers due to their unpaid leave from those who don’t understand this. Teachers often have to complete work during their unpaid leave which, when combined with this resentment towards them for having long holidays, sometimes seems unfair.

Whenever there is an attempt to clear up the confusion, teachers are accused of moaning, encouraged to quit or reminded that other jobs can be challenging too.

Teachers do not get paid "untaken" holiday when they leave - but in practice most will give a leaving date at the end of a holiday and start the new job on the first day of the new term - thus achieving unbroken service for things like teachers pensions.

Support staff should have untaken holiday adjusted on leaving.

Some support staff (eg caretakers) work year round etc.

Quite
but this thread is about teachers pay
of course there are a lot of underpaid jobs out there

I don't get the point they're making there with the strike scenario. Are they claiming that, if they don't turn up to school on any day that they aren't required to be there anyway, that makes it unpaid?

If that's the case, surely they aren't paid for half-terms, Easter, weekends etc.? It's the same for any of us: if you have a 'traditional' Monday-Friday job, you don't have to justify it to your employer when you don't turn up on a Saturday. You can 'go on strike' or do whatever you want on that day, and your employer is totally fine with that, so you haven't broken any agreed terms at all. Equally, using the same argument as the one of those teachers, you aren't paid for the weekend either.

I'm amazed that some teachers choose to bemoan the pay aspect of their jobs as their battleground, rather than focusing on the conditions, which are indeed frequently horrendous. As has been said on this thread, it isn't the pay that makes most teachers want to leave!

People really love to slag off teachers don’t they 😆

All jobs have pros and cons. For me the pros the kids, it’s hugely rewarding, the holidays are great, the pay is decent (imo) regardless of whether we’re quibbling over whether or not we’re paid for holidays. The cons are it is entirely inflexible (for appointments, your own kids’ assemblies, days off for long weekends etc), you can’t work from home, the workload is huge, and the mental and emotional load and scrutiny are exhausting.

The difference is, people seem to massively resent teachers for the pros we enjoy, and the cons we find difficult. ‘But the holidays!’ is the eternal comeback. ‘But other jobs have those cons too!’ is another. We could quite validly come back with ‘But the flexibility!’ ‘But you work from home!’ to counteract other people’s work whinges. However, we’d be shot down in the endless race to the bottom, where people are determined to prove we are not doing our very best to educate and care for their children in quite challenging circumstances, but are in fact workshy whiners who don’t know we’re born . Because people resent teachers and I can’t actually understand why. Oh yes, But The Holidays. Well, come join us. There’s a retention crisis after all.

Edited to add: @ToffeeCrabApple I didn’t actually mean to quote your post there, my post isn’t aimed directly at you!

So really this is exactly like everyone else. We could all argue that we only get paid for the days we work.

Do you put in 780-1,000 extra hours of unpaid overtime across the year? If so, then yes, your work situation is exactly like a teacher's.

Put it a different way.
Teachers are given bread for every day that they work, plus the same amount of holiday as everyone else.
But so that we don't starve during the school closure times (holidays), that bread is eked out over the full year.

I think what many people fail to understand about teaching, or really stop to consider, is that there is a world of difference between a day in day an office, and a day in a classroom.

Teachers are often in school 7.30 am until 5.30 pm.

There is NEVER a quiet day. NEVER. Every single day is steeling yourself for a sensory overload, and physical and mental demands that are pulling you in all directions, all of the time. There is no day of the week less intense than another. There is no season of the year easier than another. It’s like performing on stage, all eyes on you, every single day.

35 children all demanding your attention all day long. And a government continually shouting jump higher, jump higher. Think about that. It’s brutal on the body and mind. The pay is atrocious for the resilience needed to be a teacher.

The OP is asking if it is correct that some of the 13 weeks are unpaid holidays for teachers and yes they are.

It is not comparable to other professions and the average 'time off'. Completely different scenario. Otherwise no one would be interested in debating over it.

Clarity 😊

Agree with every word of this! I've never seen a bunch of professionals who are slagged off as much as teachers since my DP retrained to become one after a career doing something else. It's been mind-boggling to witness.

And yes, the cons of being a teacher are constantly overlooked. My DP has missed so many school events for our DC because he's teaching other people's kids. He even missed a huge play performance because his school had parents' evening scheduled for the same day and that had to take precedent. He cannot take calls during the work day so it's left to me to sort out most of our life admin. He couldn't even take the call when his brother was rushed to hospital seriously ill. He works evenings and weekends on marking and lesson planning and he never has a single day off to himself because our DC is always at home during the holidays too. Every appointment for doctor/dentist etc has to be scheduled outside of his directed hours. He regularly wakes up on a Saturday morning to ranting emails from parents who think nothing of encroaching the slither of personal time he still has.

But hey, the holidays! 🙄

I am desperate for him to leave and return to his old profession, but he actually likes the teaching bit. He likes seeing kids make progress in their learning and achieving and exceeding their goals. If all the other shit went away – especially the entitled parents – he'd teach for life. Instead, he won't, and instead future parents can reflect on why past parents chose to slag off teachers instead of supporting them when their kids are admitted into 40+ classes because there aren't enough teachers to go round.

Not every teacher puts this in. The couple of teachers across the road certainly don’t. My children, who are not teachers, put in at least that much unpaid overtime.