Can anyone help me work out how many hours I should work each week?!

[DunderMifflin]

I've just been offered a new job (yay!) that's 17.5hrs per week - because it's working with schools, I've asked if I could up-weight my hours during term time and do less during school hols. Obviously this would benefit the organisation I'd be working for as I'd be more productive when the schools were actually available. They seemed keen on the idea but I'd like to go with a proposal to them about how this would work.

This is the info:

17.5 hrs a week (they are flexible about how these are managed) and 25 days annual leave pro rata (assuming that would be 12.5 days).

I'd like to suggest that I work one day a week (7hrs) during the school hols (12 weeks a year).

How do I work out how many hours this would leave me to work during term time (40wks) - I'm assuming I wouldn't need to factor in annual leave into this?

Any ideas?! Thanks!

Is this right;

2.5 days per week x 52 weeks = 130 days to work per year
130 days - 12 days worked during hols = 118 days to work during term-time
118 / 40 weeks = 3 days per week during term-time

would full time be 35 hours per week?

Thanks Trinity - I believe so. It is advertised as 17.5 hrs and in the interview they said 'that's 2.5 days a week' but they're flexible about how these days/hours are spread out.

Double check what full time is as it seems a bit low but basically your maths looks good to me. It works out to 2.9 days per week term time so what you might do is convert everything to hours. i.e. 17.5 x 52 = hours per year. Knock off the holiday time hours you want to do and then agree to work the rest at a rate of approx 3 days a week term time, with the odd slightly early finish. What you're asking for is annualised hours.

Unless you work the same number of hours everyday, then again it's best to work out your holidays in hours. You should also get an allowance for bank holidays. Happy to calculate that for you, too complicated to type on my phone!

Ooh - good tip about holiday allowance in hours and bank hols - thanks!

I find working it out in annual hours is the easiest, so a full timer would work 52 x 35 hours a year (1820) MINUS 8 bank holidays (8 x 7 = 42) MINUS annual leave (25 x 7 = 175), so a total of 1603 hours.

If you're 50% of FT you'd work 801.5 hours a year.

Working 1 full day a week during hols is 12 x 7 = 84 hours, leaving you 717.5 hours to work during term time, so 717.5 / 40 = 18 hours a week.

But remember that this leaves you with no holidays or any slack anywhere... If you want to have a couple of weeks off in the summer, for instance, and perhaps the odd day else where you would be better doing 21 hours and keeping tabs on it all so that you could build up a day's leave in just over 2 weeks.

I think you're right mistlethrush - I'll work it out in hours as per the other suggestions but not take off a/l so I then have some flexibility.

And only need 14hrs leave to take off two weeks in the summer!

Thanks for all the suggestions - I really want to know what I'm talking about as I find it harder to renegotiate these things than getting it straight first time.