Parental leave request. Anyone help?

[navyeye]

My partner is a secondary school teacher, obviously he can't take time off in school term and when my son goes to school he won't be able to get time off in term time either.

Each year at June time my extended family go away but my partner has never been able to come. However, following the birth of our son in 2013 he applied for a weeks parental leave; this was refused (initially outright but after 3 months they did say he could have the week after off) for businesses reasons:

1. Have to pay supply staff (but he doesn't get a wage so they covers it)
2. Year 10 controlled assessments (that can be timetabled differently)
3. Unfair to expect supply staff to have same control over class as he does (he has "naughty" classes)
4. Schemes of work (which can be timetabled differently).

Anyway he took the rough with the smooth and took the week after off just to spend time with our son and missed most of the holiday. But he applied immediately for the same week off in 2015. He was told they couldn't tell him yet if he could have it off as the timetable hadn't been done.

We've just found out now, 3 months later that he can't have it off for the same 4 reasons. Reasons 1&3 are not valid reasons, however, reasons 2&4 are business reasons. However, last year in the end they didn't do any schemes of work on this week, they did them beforehand and the same for controlled assessments, a different teacher entirely did it a few months before!

Is there anything he can do about this? Is there a definition of "reasonable grounds" for refusal? I just think it's so mean of them! We can't change the week of the holiday as it coincides with my Nans birthday, my mum and dad's anniversary and my brothers birthday.

NUT fact sheet here

I think a request to go on holiday falls outside the purpose of taking care of a child.

It might be best if your DH consults his union rep for advice.

He's asked his union rep, (nasqut)? and they said they had/have to give it to him. But they didn't and won't!? He doesn't have a rep in his school for the union so I don't know if that matters?

As I understand it a family holiday would be eligible as it allows him to spend more time with his son? I don't think you even have to say what you'll be doing? Just that you have a child and you will be taking time off to care for them?

This is from the gov.uk website:

"Eligible employees can take unpaid parental leave to look after their child’s welfare, eg to:

spend more time with their children
look at new schools
settle children into new childcare arrangements
spend more time with family - eg visiting grandparents"

Surely this can't fall into the 'spending time with children' when it's just before the long school holidays. Once your son is at school, he won't be able to have holidays in term time anyway.
Why can't you change the week of the holiday - you would need to when your child starts school, and also surely when you go in to teaching, you know pretty much when your holidays are - I don't see why this should come into the 'the spend more time with your family' when he will have another 6-7 wks off from the following month!

I'm with Ellypoo.

One one of the things that you accept when you become a teacher is that you will get longer holidays but have no control over when you can take them.

Why can the holiday not be changed?

I think that for teachers, and anyone else who works "term time" ( I know they are sarcastic theoretical speech marks) that it is really really difficult to get extra time off just for a holiday during term time - that's when his pupils need him the most. And why should a whole school reschedule the tests for a whole year group just so your DH can go on holiday outside of his set 13 weeks/yr (yes, I know teachers have a lot of work to do during the holiday weeks, but come on!)

Parental leave is a statutory right so they cannot reject a request if made as per the requirements set out in the law. You do not need to specify what you will be doing so long as you have a child of the eligible age. It also doesn't matter what time holidays fall because that is entirely separate to the right to take parental leave.

What they can do is defer a request but there are restrictions on this. I'll dig out a useful link. One thing that you need to think about is what to do if the employer breaks the law or fails to meet their obligations. In the first instance i would suggest raising this informally and if that doesnt work then consider raising a grievance.

Please ignore the posters who are posting from a position of ignorance. The law is clear on this and there is no exclusion for teachers or anyone else.

Your husband's employer has not processed his request properly see here. As a starter i would speak to the line manager and explain that as they have failed to follow the correct process and see what they say.

What you do after that depends on various things like how much he wants to rock the boat and how far he is prepared to take this bearing in mind it costs to go to tribunal now and the remedy at that stage is unlikely to actually give you want you want which is the time off in that week. That said rasing a grievance, threatening to raise a grievance can sometimes prompt people to make an effort to resolve things to the complainants satisfaction but equally it might not as people get more entrenched.

So what you need to do if you do decide to raise a grievance (and this can be done informally at first - i suggest writing a reply to their letter as an appeal).

Check the eligibility criteria and that you definitely meet it. www.gov.uk/parental-leave/eligibility

Check when your husband's parental leave year starts and ends. This is from the date of the child's birth unless the employee has less than one year's service at the time of the child's birth or was working for another employer. In that case the year would begin on the anniversary of when the employee joined the organisation.

Have they proposed a new date and is that within the timescale as outlined above?

Do you have any thing in writing regarding the delay in replying due to timetable not being done yet? That is important. If the request went in first then the timetable should have been worked around the request where reasonably possible.

Then once you have all your facts and all your info you can write your letter. Do include links to the law or print outs to demonstrate your point. Your main point is that they have failed to follow their statutory obligations and had they processed your husband's request properly you understand it would have been approved because the time table had not been drawn up at the time of the request or within the 7 days they had to respond to the request.

In an appeal bullet point the following:

You wish to appeal for the following reasons: the statutory process for considering a request for parental leave has not been followed. In particular the timescale (should have been within 7 days has actually been x days). The reasons given for rejection did not exist at the time of the application or in the 7 days following because of A, B, C. They have failed to meet their obligations by offering an alternative week as per the regulations.

--

Perhaps most importantly if the leave year has been breached by their actions and your husband deprived of leave due to the deferral then you just state they cannot do that because it is a breach of the statutory regulations and they must correct that breach immediately or you will be taking further action.

Hi iK8, thanks so much for the very informative reply. Sadly with the previous request for 2013, it took them 3 months to decide no and he wrote back to them saying that they took too long, the business reasons didn't exist at the time of his request etc. The deputy head basically said the same thing as the 2 posters above "isn't the summer holiday enough for you!!" they did eventually agree to a differ week....5 months after the request was made. So they should be well aware of their statutory obligations.

When he put in his request for 2014, the deputy said, "So I expect this is going to an annual thing? We are an academy, we don't "do" parental leave". It's all via email. He also sent it to all his department colleagues as if to say "look at X, trying to get off work the skiver."

So basically the only way to make sure he gets his statutory right to UNPAID parental leave is to raise a grievance (deputy head deals with the grievance as well as parental leave request) or go to a tribunal? I don't suppose you know more about reasonable grounds for refusal, would that be something a tribunal would decide?

Am I right in thinking there is nothing to stop him requesting the 4 weeks he is entitled to? He's worked there 12 years so is eligible.

Usually he wouldn't rock the boat, but as there will only be 3 more of these trips due to our son starting to school we both feel it is important to do it now while we can, the relatives certainly aren't getting younger either.

PS. FWIW a controlled assessment isn't an exam. Last time they said he couldn't have the time off due to the controlled assessment, which never even happened because it's very flexible and get changed often.

If informal attempts at resolution for work issues have failed the next step is almost always to raise a grievance. A tribunal should be a last resort but yes, one of the things they will consider is whether the reasons given are reasonable and meet the criteria for deferment (note not refusal). However with some of the behaviour described in your last post it may be possible to make a claim via the county court for breach of contract and cite some of the bullying behaviour mentioned. But I think that's getting way ahead of where you are now and the first thing is definitely to appeal the decision and get the union involved in that.

He can request anything that he is entitled to within the statutory regulations and more if his contractual terms allow.

Why is the union being so useless? They should be all over this with the emails and process breaches.

As regards the refusing to permit him to exercise his legal entitlement to parental leave and then putting it in writing and the sharing with colleagues you might want to take a look at the bullying and harassment policy and equal opportunities policy. If there is an HR department or contact you could forward am email to "check if this is correct because it doesn't seem to reflect the current law on this matter".

His being a teacher, the school being an academy makes no difference. The law is the law and applies to all employees and employers.

Thanks so much iK8, I have no idea why they are being so useless, they emailed the deputy basically saying, "you have no right to refuse leave and you're on dodgy ground given your reason to defer it", but the deputy seems to just have ignored the union.

Sadly, as with the grievance procedure, the deputy deals with all HR issues, there isn't a separate department! He is also in charge of checking teachers marking and performance reviews. My partner has been back in work 3 weeks and had his books pulled 6 times for marking spot checks!

I run a very very small business with 3 employees and I would never treat them like this. Obviously he is worried about rocking the boat now, especially given this extra scrutiny he is facing. As soon as his performance review is done (usually as soon they come back to school they set a date but nothing so far) he is going to raise a grievance and also request 3 weeks additional leave!

Somebody in my school used to do this. It was not possible to cover his teaching with a specialist supply teacher (shortage subject) and colleagues took up the slack with key groups. It caused bad feeling, although was of course allowed. Is he really going to ask for three weeks this year??

Would it hurt the people involved to delay the get together for a week or two? I know families who celebrate key events before or after the event, or even half way between 2 key events, because it's easier all round. Some of your DH's colleagues may be doing this already. We can't all choose to have birthdays / other anniversaries during school holidays.

My reply earlier was as a teacher.

I would rearrange a holiday before I would ask for parental leave. The only exception for me personally would be a wedding or funeral or similar.

Long term is it worth bad feeling for your DH for the sake of a holiday regardless of the legal right to it?

Can your family not move the holiday by a few weeks?

i don't know the rules but if the employer is allowed to defer the request then what's to stop them deferring it until some point in the summer holidays when the absence is presumably less inconvenient for the school. This wouldn't be a good outcome for you would it?

Because you can't been on annual leave and parental leave at the same time MrsWobble3. The same way you can't be on sick leave and on annual leave at the same time or maternity leave and annual leave.

The deferment cannot go over the parental leave year either. So if the op's husband joined his employer in September 2002 and his child was born on 3rd June 2012 the leave year runs from 3rd June until 2nd June. If leave is requested for the last week of May the longest it could be deferred is the last full week before the 3rd June.

Because this topic is employment issues I have answered as an HR professional. On other topics I might answer as a friend would or a pragmatist and sometimes that is different to my professional opinion.

The deferment cannot go over the parental leave year either. So if the op's husband joined his employer in September 2002 and his child was born on 3rd June 2012 the leave year runs from 3rd June until 2nd June. If leave is requested for the last week of May the longest it could be deferred is the last full week before the 3rd June.

Sorry now I've written that I'm not sure it's actually correct. It may mean that the employee gets twice as much leave in the following year. The important bit is when the child turns 5.

I will double check this and be back!

Just checked. It appears it can go over the year so long as it is within 6 months and does not prevent the employee taking all their parental leave entitlement before the child turns 5 years old (18 for disabled children), including the new entitlement that comes with the new leave year.

For goodness sake! Can the family not take the holiday during the 13 weeks of school holidays? Maybe it is auntie vi's birthday or whatever but so what? If they want your husband to be there they will change the holiday. Don't be a teacher if you want term time holidays!

why does the holiday have to be then? Why do you have to go on holiday with your family, why can you, DH and DC go on holiday together.

Sorry, but surely when you sign up to be a teacher, this is one of the downsides.

but technically are teachers on annual leave during the summer holidays? Does their employment contract give them 13 weeks annual leave - or is it framed in terms of required time in school? i don't want to be pedantic but if i were the employer i would be arguing this if i could - it must be very disruptive to have teachers absent.

Technicalities of the law are one thing, but personally I would advise your DP to think very carefully before wading in with grievances, unions, and talking about bullying and harassment and equal ops policies and threatening further action. The impact on his working relationships is likely to be significant and I would question whether the fact that his parental leave has been refused rather than postponed and the right procedure hasn't been followed is sufficient reason to take that line.

Yes technically they may not have followed the required procedure. But what would he want from a grievance? An apology that they'd not followed the procedure? They are entitled to defer it if there are business reasons why it can't be accommodated, and I can absolutely understand why they want to. And although they should have postponed rather than refused, would your DH actually want the postponement? If not, what's the point trying to force it?

A couple of birthdays are not a reason a holiday can't be postponed for a few weeks either. It's about a judgement as to what end result he wants. If it was a one-off event (rather than an annual thing) and was really important and really couldn't be moved, and the employer had absolutely no justification for not allowing the request, I'd absolutely be suggesting he takes it further. But just because he technically could isn't enough reason to do so in my opinion, and I'm not sure any outcome from that kind of approach is going to be an improvement on the current situation.

My mother did this, she wanted to take term time holiday for no really good reason, in an educational role. They said no. She was all guns blazing, unions, grievances, harassment blah blah. In the end she did get what she wanted. But at the expense of her workplace relationships with speers and management, her reputation and ultimately her own stress levels as she found the whole grievance process very hard. We are nc for various reasons so I can't ask her whether on reflection it was worth it to take her holiday in term time rather than 3 weeks later. I doubt it though.

Listen to flowery.

aallaalso, parental leave can only be taken In one week blocks so how is he going to request 3 weeks, are there three separate weeks, all in term time?

He isn't going to ask for 3 or 4 weeks, it just seems very odd that there is literally no business reason to refuse a request of 1 week unpaid leave not 4 weeks as is the entitlement.

I don't see why replacing a teacher is any more hassle than replacing any employee requesting leave? His school EMPLOY supply teachers, as in they are there week in week out, the exact same people, they know the school, staff and pupils. He would have to set all his work before he left and he would have to mark all his work when he comes back.

Basically everyone on this thread is saying as a teacher he shouldn't be allowed this right. I agree with flowery that it's probably more hassle than it's worth pursuing it, especially given the scrutiny he is already facing. But really, what's the point in statutory guidance if we're going to allow employers to use bully boy tactics and the old "13 weeks leave" clause to get out of providing a statutory minimum during one of the quietest weeks of the year.

Would it be ok to refuse a female teacher maternity leave for part of her request, insisting that she worked until the end of a term for example?

Obviously the date could be changed, but really, why be so mean about it? It's a statutory entitlement, it's unpaid leave, they have cover staff, he sets and marks all the work. It just baffles me that a big organisation such as a school would risk a tribunal over this.