Thinking about applying for a school admin job. Can you help me understand how the pay works?

[Boonlark]

So there's a part time school admin job. It's £18k Pro rata but it's only during school term and is only 15 hours a week.

Does that mean you only get paid during term time? And is the £18k pro rata'd over the 52 weeks, with the 13 weeks of school holidays taken off?

I'm trying to work out how much it pays per month and it makes a big difference whether full time equivalent is 39 weeks or 52

Basically you get paid for 39 weeks of the year but it’s spread out over 12 equal payments.

School admin jobs can be notoriously difficult to get though, and I would imagine even harder at the minute. They can get hundreds of applicants.

Good luck.

So 18000 divided by 52 weeks

Take that figure and times it by 39. Then divide that figure by 12. That’s your salary.

Thanks. So that ends up about £450 a month.

1124.50?

Around the 1100 mark is what you would be looking at.

Sorry, I meant because it's 15 hrs per week

To work it out accurately you'll need to know what the full time hours would be and also you will be entitled to some holiday pay that you'll need to add on. In my school we pay 6 weeks holiday and the FTE is based on 36 hours which would make it around £540 per month.

Yes, I make it in the rough region of £500 pcm. In school admin you normally work around 38 or 39 weeks per year if it's term time only (depending on whether you work INSETS), but you'll get maybe 5 weeks holiday pay on top, making about 43 or 44 weeks paid. Full time equivalent is about 36 or 37 hours a week, so 15 hours will be a bit less than half time. Basically, school admin pay is crap, but the convenience of term time, school hour working is worth its weight in gold if you've got young kids. One word of warning though is that (depending on your school) it can be quite inflexible, as you don't have any holiday to actually take (all of your nominal 5 weeks 'holiday' falls within the school holidays, so you just get it as extra pay). So it can be very hard to get time off for things like your own kids' school plays, sports days etc. Just something to bear in mind.

Oh and yes, school admin jobs are competitive. Have you done any volunteering in a school? That can be helpful. Otherwise, know your stuff around safeguarding and confidentiality - both are absolutely key (especially if it's a local school where you might know some of the families). Big up your flexibility - whatever your job title actually is, the job will throw all sorts at you (be prepared to move from accountancy to web design to sticking your arm down a toilet within the space of ten minutes). If you're willing to take on first aid (particularly if you're already qualified) then you will win a lot of popularity points. Of course it's great if you like kids, but you're actually going to spend more time dealing with adults - you need to be able to liaise effectively with senior staff/governors, harassed teachers and difficult parents. Your job is to facilitate everyone else being able to do their job better. Read things like the school vision and school improvement plan before your interview - Heads love it when you can talk about how you see yourself fitting into the school's ethos.

Arm down toilet applies in primary, unlikely in secondary!

Sorry you're quite right, I just assumed primary .

Thanks that's really helpful

My current role isn't well paid, has a lot of transferable skills and involves confidentiality and safeguarding, so that's encouraging....and also sometimes involves unclogging the loos

You'll fit right in