Shared Parental Leave when teaching

[EdithGrantham]

I have been told by a friend that there is a potential loophole for teachers to get paid through holidays when off 'on maternity' by using SPL instead which can be stopped and started in 3 blocks. I'm still trying to get my head round how it would work exactly so has anyone else done this?

If you look on the government website, it goes through how to take shared parental leave. Your school should also have a policy for shared parental leave, usually It's attached to maternity policies.
It's not a loophole though. It's a system that allows new parents to structure their leave in a way that's best for their family. People who aren't teachers can use SPL and still take their annual holiday, just like they would on maternity leave. Teachers using SPL to access holiday is them doing the same as other people in different workplaces.

maternity.money/boost-teacher-maternity-pay
This link is a good guide.

Thanks both.
@LolaSmiles I only meant a loophole in that I don't think it's used by the majority of teachers who would otherwise take say 9 months maternity and no SPL.

@Hercisback thanks for that link, that information sounds quite different to what my friend sent in that it is only beneficial in some cases. From what my friend said a mum could take maternity for say 18 weeks, curtail it at Christmas to get full pay over the holidays, start SPL after the holidays, curtail this at Feb half term to get full pay for that week and so on until three blocks of SPL have been used across as many weeks of entitlement you had left.

I used the government website to see how this would work for my dates and I'd potentially get an additional 4 weeks paid before having to move onto unpaid leave or return to work. But I wondered if anyone had done it in reality to see how their school reacted

Sorry if I sounded short in my reply. It wasn't intended that way.
Sometimes I feel the way people talk about people returning just before the summer is somehow a cheeky way to game the system rather than doing what most people in non-teaching positions do: use annual leave to extend their maternity. It's a pet peeve of mine and I'd love for using SPL to be a normal part of life.

No worries :) I know what you mean, I've already started my maternity but not due for a couple of weeks so don't think it'll work out for me to take next summer as SPL but if the info my friend has sent is right I'd be able to use it for Spring 1, 2 and part of Summer 1 whereas if I just use maternity leave I'll be onto unpaid leave before Easter but I'm not 100% sure I've got the right end of the stick.

I think what dh and I had planned to do 9 years ago when our dd2 was born was something similar to what you are saying. But it was all still relatively new back then and we ended up losing out.

I took January-July off, so about 6 months. I thought I had 3 more months of paid leave which I could have taken, before the last 3 months unpaid kicked in. Dh took annual leave during August/September. He asked his work to start the 3 months of my SPL from October - December. Unfortunately, he was not paid anything during that whole period. The reason given was that it was not consecutive to my 6 months of ML. So he actually took the final 3 months of my 12, rather than there being a pause in the middle and then adding 3 onto my 6 iyswim?

Hopefully things have changed now and you can actually stop and start and leave gaps in the SPL, but I don't know if that is the case or not.

Thanks @Meredusoleil, I would definitely need to check the proposal with the school business manager/HR before going ahead with it