Am being a bit thick here maybe…can someone tell me if I will be more able to cover school holidays if I drop from 4 days to 3 days a week at work?

[yoppee]

The reason I’m confused is because my holiday allowance will also reduce proportionally, but surely if I’m working 1 less day a week, I’ll be better able to cover the school holidays?
Hoping someone can help me work this out…thanks.

Well yes- because you will be off for two days so you won’t need to “cover” them.

You presumably don’t get a days annual leave for every day worked

It depends what childcare you have. You'd need fewer days of childcare, but you won't have more time off work. If you work 3/5 days, you'd get 3/5 of the holiday allowance. So say your holiday allowance is 30 days for FT, for 4 days a week it would be 24 days and for 3 days a week it would be 18 days a year.

The days you are not working you will be able to cover. The days you need holiday for will be the same % as before.

Your holiday is proportional so for working days you use the same % as you would have for a full week before.

It depends. Your holiday is pro rated. So if you usually get 20 days annual leave (4 weeks) your annual leave would be 12 days for a 3/5 pattern.
ultimately it depends on whether your work is flexible - so eg would they let you work 5/5 a couple of weeks either side of the summer holiday and then take the extra days off in the summer hol.
it also depends on your childcare arrangements. So many summer holiday clubs will do “full weeks” - so working 3/5 won’t help. However if you rely on family, it would be much easier

If you work 3 days a week you’ll need to use up to 18 days holiday to cover the summer holidays.
you can apply for unpaid leave though if you wanted to.

Thank you, so I think it means I am better able to cover the school holidays in that case because I gain a day for every week, yet I don’t lose that number of days in holiday allowance type thing!? So it does leave me in a better position?
Now I’ve typed it out it seems so obvious but this morning my little brain wasn’t working correctly :-)

Maybe a term time contract would be available instead?

How many days leave to You currently get?

I find that not only is it better because I only have to take off/find childcare for 3 days a week, but I can shuffle my days around during term time so I don’t need to use as much holiday for school events, sick children etc. This obviously only works if all your children are school age and your work are happy to be flexible.

Not necessarily. I found it easier to find childcare working multiple short days.

School age child care during the holidays often doesn’t extend to a full workday plus commute time. It’s also not always offered with custom days. An art club might run for 5 days one week from 9-3.

we had many more options available with me working something closer to school hours year round.

I found it easier when I did 3 days because I got a bank holiday allowance and didn’t work Mondays so got most of that to book another time. Also my parents helped out, at least 1 day a week so by factoring that in it meant I usually took a week and a couple of random days off and DH took 6/7 days we were covered really

Yes you will get 52 days off already (1x day per week) for each day you don’t work, so that’s 104 days off for working 3 days a week 2x 52). Then you get your pro rated actual annual leave on top.

You could ask to do long days during summer, thus building up some more free hours. Eg work 8-6pm x2 days and then have almost most of day 3 off (just for summer hols) or you could be paid 3 days but perhaps do an extra morning in term time, banking those hours for an extra day in half term.

Actually I found 4 days easier rather than 3.5 because less of my annual leave was needed for bank holidays.

Yes it's easier to cover the holidays.
When my kids were young I also found it easier to cover sickness because my work allowed me to make up different days.

So if my child was ill on a Monday and off nursery so I couldn’t go in, but by the end of the next week they were better, my mum could have them as a one off and I could work the Friday as an extra rather than taking leave.

You will be able to take the same number of weeks off, probably, but the weeks you need childcare you will only need 3 days not 4.

Unless you are having to take all bank holidays off out of a reduced leave allowance as that would impact?

I agree with this.
It depends what kind of childcare you are using and how flexible your work is.
I have always worked FT as I am a single parent, and the summer holidays in particular were always a bit of a juggle. Holiday activities where we are tended to be part of the day once DC were out of nursery and for a week block. Then I worked around this. Older DC went to holiday club some full days, younger DC could not cope with this and had private childcare which was ££. I have no idea how I did it, but it probably explains why I have not made promotion.

Yes and No.

Think of holiday in weeks. You’ll still get the same number of week holiday.

So the number of school holiday weeks you can take off won’t change.

But, the number of days you need to sort child care for on the weeks you can’t take off will now be three rather than four. If you’ve got a flexible job, you might also be able to do a bit of wriggling and work 4 days the week before the holidays start and 2 the first week of the holidays (and vice versa at the end).

If your school like a Friday / Monday / random Wednesday inset day, be tactical about which days you work.

can shuffle my days around during term time

I.do this in the holidays too to fit with childcare options.
If your bank holidays are rolled. Into your holiday allowance don't work mondays if possible because you'll need to use days for that. I work 4 days Tue to Fri and have 4 days extra holiday than my job share who works mondays because I get the allowance (pro rated) but don't need to use it for Mondays

Hello @yoppee This kind of question is coming up a lot at the moment so you're definitely not alone in trying to figure out how work patterns fit around school holidays. We’ve got a couple of threads running in partnership with the Department for Education that might be worth a look. There’s a Q&A with an experienced Early Years teacher answering questions, and another where lots of parents are sharing how they’re managing things like holiday cover and flexible working.

Might be helpful to have a read or post there too as we can see lots of posters in the same boat.