Term time holidays for staff

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In my previous schools a rare odd day off might be agreed for a wedding or say a special birthday weekend.

At this school we seem to be having a rash of requests for hen dos, overseas that require 2/3 days off.

In the past they seem to have agreed them as the staff member has no control over the date.

What happens at your school?

Juliette - school staff don't have 'Annual Leave' days they can use though - all Annual Leave can only be taken in the holidays, so it isn't an option to 'book a day off'. That's why it can be an issue.

There has to be goodwill shown SOMEWHERE to make up the balance of work your staff (if it's anything like my school) undertake that is far from reasonable every day. I'm talking about people working over holidays, staying when a meeting runs over, picking up a class when the teacher is suddenly taken ill, sitting with a child to do some extra work at lunch. If you take the approach of only granting what the Book says you have to, the staff will start doing the same. It sounds like you need to tighten up a bit, but turning down requests for funerals doesn't sound right to me.

There has to be goodwill shown SOMEWHERE to make up the balance of work your staff (if it's anything like my school) undertake that is far from reasonable every day.

I agree.

Many teaching and classroom staff give over and above every day, woking well beyond their timetabled hours. I am paid 8:30am to 3:30pm, with 45 min unpaid for lunch/morning break per day. I always do a minimum of 1-2 hours extra unpaid each day, often work weekends and in holidays - not paid for this time. I use my own money to pay for things for school regularly, and the amount of emotional energy given to my job is immense.

The list of 'extras' goes on. Just like for pretty much every other teacher and TA in my experience.

If you want staff who do all this happily and without question (at least most of the time) then you need to build some 'give' on the management side of things too.

Because if you get too strict and miserly with rules then you may end up with staff who decide to rigidly stick to their rules too. And we all know that schools couldn't actually function if they did this.

As said already - I work for management who are lovely and where she can, she grants people time off, albeit unpaid for some situations. As a result we have a fantastic team spirit, with high morale and everyone happily giving their extra bit.

I'm a governor at a school which has recently had an almost complete change of SLT and Governing Body members. Under the old leadership, all requests for time off during term time were dealt with by the Head alone and she never said no. As a result, we found it had become accepted that staff members could arrange their own weddings for a week away during term time, take several days off to attend family weddings (apparently so that they didn't have to rush to get there, and could enjoy the full experience), take time off for 'big' birthdays for themselves,partners, parents etc, take summer holidays leaving on the last day of term etc etc etc

We were amazed at how much this was costing in supply cover, not to mention the disruption for the children.

Now there is a policy that funerals of family members/graduations for self or close family can be approved at the Head's discretion but other requests for time off need to be put in writing to the Governors, and need to explain why the time off is in 'exceptional circumstances' (so similar for time off for children). We have had far fewer requests and almost all have been genuinely exceptional.

As a PP has said, we did have a couple of requests from teaching assistants for several days for weddings in the UK. When they were offered unpaid time off (so there was no cost to school for extra hours of another member of staff) amazingly they could do the journey in a shorter time.

We did initially get push back on the change in policy from some, but actually the most dedicated staff responded positively as I suspect they were also getting irritated at working harder to cover for colleagues who were taking the piss.

Yes I think that's a good point stone's and sticks.

I agree wholeheartedly with PPs that work life balance, some give and take etc is important for everyone and beneficial to the school overall but I find that the "good" staff would prefer things to be a bit tighter.

It's never the fully committed, excellent teachers who "need" time off for anniversaries and hen dos and if granted, then the other staff have to cover them.

Its probably depends on your current staff team too. We are a relatively small staff team (about 25 teaching staff, mostly FT, some PT, mix of teachers/TAs/HLTAs) No one in our current team would be looking to take advantage so our HT more flexible approach works well. If you have some staff who would be wanting time regularly I can see why you'd have to be more rigid.

It'd be different for full time staff, but as a job share I used to take time off for festivals, and in return my job share partner would get to go to sports days, go Christmas shopping and have long weekends. The head had the great view that as long as one of us was there she was happy; and she recognised that this flexibility made us very happy.

Teacher sickness is obviously paid (and claimed for). Family funerals are also granted without pay being docked.

Anything else should be unpaid and at the discretion of the school.

A special school, with high adult to child ratio, presumably has that ratio because most children have EHCPs. They are entitled to this support, so it’s not an option to allow staff leave and expect support staff to be spread more thinly.

As a p/t teacher, I was asked if I fancied travelling half way round the world for days to attend & perform at a cultural event with a local group. Obviously I said I'd ask my newish Head but it was unlikely I'd be able to go. To my surprise, he said yes, his exact words being "you do more than enough, go for it and we'll sort it". It was mid/late September and because of my timetable, I would only miss 2 working days. My line manager owed me some cover, so it cost the school one cover lesson.

In return, I attended & performed at an amazing cultural event last year. I regaled everyone with tales about another culture. The Head was particularly impressed that we drank a bar dry . I was rather jet-lagged when I came back but managed ok. My tutor group thought it was brilliant. The local group had been on national TV the year before so there was a good angle for the local papers to take. Win-win!

*5 days. Shouldn't drink gin/wine then post...