If I became a teacher, would I be able to not need childcare during school holidays?

[Twiglett]

or is that naive?

(assuming I work in the same LEA as my children's school .. I understand I would need before and after-school care)

DH also doesn't leave till 9am so he can take to school .. which means would only need after-school club

For me it's the lack of flexibility in the make up of the working day that I find hard. I would love to work more than I do, but I can't guarantee that ds1 won't go off on one in the mornings so only do one day. If I could start work later, say 10ish, I could work more.

twiglett the childcare thing is my concern too, at the mo I am spending a fortune paying someone else to care for my kids while I put up with soemone else's - doesn't feel right to me and I really want to be there for them when they start school. Maybe you could do some work in the school they go to, even on a volunterr basis to start with, to see what you think?

People keep telling me that I'd make a really good teacher .. I am a good trainer of people and I'm always surrounded by other people's kids .. but I've been out of the workplace for 5 years .. so am slightly knocked sideways with the concept of being told what to do

For me it is family friendly in the sense that you do get the vast majority of the holidays with your kids, better I think than seeing plays etc. Make sure you have somebody who can go to such things though.

I start between 7.30 or 8 in the morning but I live within walking distance of work. I leave between 4 -6.30 in the evening. It can be flexible but if you leave early you have to catch up with it the next day or so.

Dont go into FE. Poorly paid and imo not nearly as exciting as teaching younger ones.

The best thing to do is go and spend a few days in primary and secondary schools. People do this all the time so schools wont be surprised by the request.

I could never do an office job now after having had the holidays.

My husband teaches and rarely gets in before 6. So much paperwork and resource chasing/making. But hols are great, though he will spend alot of it working. It is a vocation as another poster said. Bear in mind that primary si all subjects and secondary is specialised. Helps if you're interested and good at lots of things or really into one thing (saying that my dh has come to hate his subject over the years)
Good luck.

Reallytired - you are right about going to the toilet! That was one of the many reasons I gave up a permanent teaching job. Now I do supply which gives me the freedom to pick and choose when I want to work and don't have any of the preparation and marking to do in the evenings. While the holidays will be broadly similar to what your children are doing, there will be extra days such as INSET when you will have to go school and they are at home.

I think that most people who haven't tried teaching think that it is an easy ride. It's a job where you always feel you should be doing more and when you've got a young family that's very stressful.

Find the right school to work in too. I work in a brilliant school which makes a huge difference to my stress.

If I could choose again at teh start of my career I'd have gone for primary though rather than secondary.

It is a job where you will never ever catch up on yourself but if you realise that and dont get so stressed about it it is much easier.
I know teachers who are always stressed and those who are not. The difference is often how they view it. A lot of people set themselves rules e.g. never take work home.

I'm not sure whether you have said or not Twiglett, but what kind of childcare are you looking at? At both the nurseries DSes have been to we have had to pay during the holidays although I do know that there are some who will only charge half or sometimes even nothing for those weeks
I teach part time now and we are now very fortunate in that DH is now self employed. I was dreading DS starting school himself and having to miss plays, assembley etc, but so far it has worked very well. I'm also fortunate in that the school I now work at are very very understanding about family issues and are always happy to let us swap free periods, leave early in our free periods etc if we need to. My last school was a different matter and in fact it was their appauling attitude when DS was in hospital that finally made me leave.

Sorry bit of an epic there. I guess it really depends on your personal situation and also the school you work in.

on the whole, yes, but you'll need someone to care for your kids on in service days.

the flexibility and ability to make your own rules like never taking work home take a few years to achieve though, as a student teacher or NQT plus a couple of years after that, it is tough going.

Yes, that's true about taking a few years. I'm in my 8th year of teaching and am still loving it. But I have moved to a type of school where I am much happier, taken courses to be qualified to teach in subjects I prefer to my original one and got promotion.
I still think the best bit though is the holidays with the kids.

I don't think teaching is any more family-unfriendly than many other jobs. I'm not a teacher but many friends and in-laws are! Their experiences seem to be that the initial few years can be tough, but after that it does get easier, if you're organised anyway.

My sister in law and her husband both teach, one at primary, one at secondary. They never work at weekends and very rarely in holidays - at Christmas for example my sister in law went in for half a day, taking one child in with her, the other opted instead to come and play with my son. In the summer she typically goes into school for about 2 days, and does a very small amount of paperwork/planning from home. She and her husband managed to go to New Zealand for 4 weeks last summer with no adverse effect on their planning and preparation.

My brother in law has had many jobs both in and out of teaching, and he is adamant that teaching is the most family-friendly job he's had - with the caveat already mentioned of it being hard/impossible to get to your own children's school events.

Not getting time off for your own children's school events is indeed a problem, my in-laws are lucky in that they have willing parents who are able to attend many events. In any case, at my own children's school, there are many children whose parents (not teachers) can't often attend school events in the daytime, so it's not unique to teaching.

I do think you must really want to teach and to be prepared to deal with awkward customers (children, parents, sometimes heads!) and a lot of paperwork, but certainly the friends I have who teach manage to combine that with bringing up children and still having active social or community lives. Perhaps they've all just hit lucky with their schools!

I suggest that you get a support job in a school. You would see what a school is like to work in. Prehaps you can voleenteer intially.

Sometimes teachers have to put up with really awful cr@p. It does seem to be the UK national sport, how nasty can you be to teachers. Teachers sometimes get sworn at, low level distruption and blamed for all the ills of society.

My parents never used childcare, and they were teachers. I did spend inordinate amounts of time hanging round after school "borrowing" the school secretary's typewriter and helping out with things, but that was because at primary I was always at the same school where my father was head. At secondary I had much longer holidays than them, so I spent a lot of time helping in their classrooms. It is completely exhausting in reception even when you're not in charge- just the constant stream of children wanting to ask/tell you something, you never have a second's downtime. There was much less paperwork in those days though

So true about the loo thing. I often have to ask my support staff or another teacher to watch my class so I can go to the toilet or have a drink of water.

What you can get away with as head teacher is different to what a NQT can get away with, or even an established teacher.

Life is harder when you are at the bottom of a career.

I don't think inset days would be a problem to you twig. You could surely arrange reciprical childcare with one of the many people you will have helped out over the past few years - just basically a long playdate. I think the term time workload would be the difficult aspect.

Do not, for one minute, be fooled into thinking, in your wildest dreams, that a support job in a classroom advertised at 16K means 16K! It's 16K based on working (I think) 52 weeks a year, 35 hours a week whereas in reality you could be doing 39 weeks a year and 25 hours a week

In our town, full-time TA jobs are virtually non-existent. Most new posts are advertised for anywhere between 10-22 hours a week. At our school, it is usually 16-20 hours, and this includes 1 hour per day 'dinner lady' duty - this is compulsory for all new TA contracts. So you would never earn £16,000 a year.

However, if the full-time salary is not vital to you, a support role like that is a good way of working term-time hours and avoiding the problem of childcare in school holidays. TAs also don't have to do all inset days, at our school they are required to do one or two per year and sometimes invited to other ones, but they don't do all 5.

There's no doubt that teaching is/can be a very rewarding career, but you must really want to do it in order to hack it. I've been doing it 22 years (last 11 part-time, due to DCs), yet I would say that I work harder now than when I started. There are so many new initiatives being thrown at us to assimilate, and so much more pressure than 20 years ago, that I constantly feel de-skilled. Also, my brain cells are diminishing fast. The only way I can tolerate it is by working 3 days a week in a job-share, so I can use Thurs/Fri to catch up a bit. Mon/Tues/Weds are 16 hour days, no word of a lie. Fortunately, DH and I box and cox on those days and the kids are used to seeing my shoulders hunched over the PC each evening.

In terms of the holidays, yes, it's great, but it's not a family friendly job in terms of day to day. My kids are older now, but when they were younger, they needed before and after school care every day. A typical day for me is being at work from 8 til 5, and then I do some work in the evening.Oh and I rarely get a lunchbreak. Having said that, I'm middle management, so would probably leave by about 4 if I was a mainscale teacher. Once you're on the Leadership team you're talking much longer hours. I think teaching is a great career and one of the most worthwhile things you can do, but I wouldnt go into it just for what you perceieve as child friendly benefits. I know a lot of people in quite different jobs who dont have to be in work til 9 oclock, or who have term time contracts etc so as i say, on a day to day basis you're probably better off in another job!

Yes, agreed about support staff wages. I believe my TA is 16K pro rata, which works out at 11k (inner London) - something I think is shocking!

Just to give an idea, I teach Y1, 2nd year, my hrs are in school by 8, leave by 5:30 or 6 every night, at least 1-2 hrs each evening, at least 1/2 to a full day at the weekend. Holidays are pretty much holidays, but I usually go in 1 day during half terms, 2 days on longer holidays, 3 days in summer.

My colleagues who have been teaching 10+ years say that the hours they work are not that different.

I think our school is quite supportive (full PPA always given) but I know that there is a very different culture in different schools.

I don't have childcare in the holidays. I feel that I lead a double life - the school terms, and the holidays. I completely switch off from school work during the holidays.

There are inevitably a couple of inset days when you have to work and the children are off. If you don't have a regular childminder, then you need DH or a friend to cover for you.