Employment law

[AxolotlEars]

Hi..... hopefully the right place....I applied for a TA role and at the interview said that I already had a holiday booked during term. It was two weeks at the end of term and one in September. The headmaster said it was fine as it was pre-existing. I was then offered the job which I accepted. After the summer holidays I returned to work and the headmaster said that he'd been told off by HR as he shouldn't have actually agreed.( Honestly I'd assumed that the time off wouldn't be paid. ) He said that I could make up the 10 days over the next year. My husband thinks that they the LA can't make me do this as the headmaster agreed to me having the time off prior to my accepting the job offer. Does anyone have any insight?

What does it say in your contract of employment about time off? Hopefully there are some clues there on how much you can take when, and whether it's paid or not.

the only thing I can think of is that he shouldn't have agreed to paid holiday if you won't accrue enough leave over the remainder of the year to cover it. I used to manage in the NHS and if someone came to us with pre booked holiday that would not be covered by the rest of the year then it would have to be taken as unpaid leave. The "make the time up" plan that he has given you seems to be a fair compromise.

Is it an Academy/Trust or an LEA school? You could try asking in the Staffroom in the Education section - lots of experience of unusual employment situations there.

Your post isn't clear - are you saying that the HM authorized 15 days of annual leave (which you've taken and been paid for) and is now telling you that you'll need to work extra days/hours to accrue the 10 additional days of leave that your allowance for the year (presumably 5 days) doesn't cover?

You'll need to check your contract. Your employer does have the legal right to claw this overpayment back, but only if this is set out expressly in writing. If your contract doesn't mention it, they cannot compel you to pay it back or 'work it off'.

What they can't do in any circumstances is deduct the money in whole or in part from your salary without your consent.

Putting the law to one side, if you like the job and wish to stay, it may be prudent to 'do the right thing' and return the money/work it off, especially given that you'd assumed the leave would be unpaid.

It is their error, but you should have contacted them as soon as you noticed the initial overpayment.

Usually you can’t take a term time holiday as teacher or TA, we don’t get AL like anyone else, ours is allocated to school holidays, so they have been very generous letting you have such a massive amount of time off. I’d approach this whole thing from a point of view of gratitude and compromise, making up the days would be good but when as a TA can you realistically do your job outside of term time? They are really throwing you a bone here by even offering this solution, and you steaming in with “I know my rights!” isn’t going to lead to a happy work life, schools are notoriously political.

@Darragon I didn’t get the impression the OP was streaming in!

It’s clearly a mistake from the HT and I don’t see how the op can make up the time easily either. It’s probably a compromise to make it unpaid. It’s something the Head should have discussed with HR before offering the job - but if the op was demonstrably the best candidate then offering the job to someone who didn’t meet the job spec would not be right either. So a compromise is unpaid and plenty of people have issues with dc and elderly parents and need time off. It’s 10 days so the other option might be doing some other job/task or longer hours each day? Anyway - negotiate.

Pre-agreed holiday can be cancelled by your employer as long as they give you twice the amount of notice as the length of your holiday.

However, are you saying that they have mistakenly paid you holiday that you hadn't yet accrued? In which case then yes, they can ask you to make up the days.

Are you term time only or full year with annual leave? I am a TA in further education and my last role was term-time only, whereas my current one is full year with annual leave.

If you are TTO then the headmaster has messed up because you cannot use annual leave or make the time back because you work all the days they need you, and you don't get annual leave. In this case now, I would think that you making the 10 days up is the only option as you can't use your leave as you don't have any, but I can see that it's annoyed the school because they probably don't really need you there when you aren't already.

If you are full year with AL, yes normally you would have to take the AL in school holidays and it's going to annoy them that you are having time off in term-time. However the headmaster has said you can, which is reasonable given you booked the holiday before you knew about the job, and they will just have to manage - it is only actually a practical problem, not an employment one!

The op could help at parents evenings, sports matches, exam results day, invigilating, open days and various extra activities to pay back the time. She would need to be flexible and accept it’s not her “job” but she’s got the holiday so she’s not really losing much.