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Original poster

Who works term-time only?

14 replies

clumsymum · 07/05/2007 17:15

And please, how did you find your job?

I have good solid I.T. support and accountancy experience, Customer care, credit control and lots more.

I am sooooo tired of trying to organise my business activities around school times, school holidays etc.

If I could find an interesting job, paying money (anything more than minimum wage would be an improvement right now) that would give me school holidays off, I'd leap at the chance.

Don't know how to find one tho'

OP posts:

RustyBear · 07/05/2007 17:23

I work in a school, doing ICT support, which basically means maintaining the network & the teachers laptops, helping the teachers teach ICT, sorting out problems with interactive whiteboards creating resources & doing some record keeping/data entry etc.
I work fuul time term time & get paid for approx 43 weeks of the year (ie I get paid for 4 weeks I don't work, as holiday pay) but my pay is spread equally over 12 months.
There are not so many jobs like this is primary schools, though they are becoming more common, but there are more in secondary schools.
Alternatively you could look for a school secretary/bursars job, where you would do budget/payroll/admissions etc - i should think they'd jump at someone with your experience.

scatterbrain · 07/05/2007 17:26

Could you do agency work and only accept short contracts ? So you keep the holidays free ?

RustyBear · 07/05/2007 17:29

Sorry -forgot the second part of your question - I got my job from being at my kid's school as a volunteer & being the only person who wasn't actually teaching at the time who knew how to use ctrl-alt-del to restart a frozen computer. After that people got in the habit of asking me when I was there, and when the ICt suite was installed I was asked to look after it.You could try of your local authority, plus any others within reasonable travelling distance. There might also be colleges, or private schools around. Or you could just ring up - this is a good time, because people who work in schools often have to give half a term's notice, so there may well be several places looking for new staff for September.

Saggarmakersbottomknocker · 07/05/2007 17:33

Meeee!

Currently doing admin in a school, previously did admin for a charity and managed to negotiate term-time only (bar the odd day here and there) as a cost saving opportunity.

Like Rusty, I get paid for 43 weeks a year spread over 12 months. The pay isn't brill, but the benefits, for me, outweigh that as despite my children being older dd isn't in the best of health and I would need care for her in the holidays. My post was advertised and they really wanted SIMs experience (that's the software schools use for admin) - I didn't have that but must have made up for it in other areas. if you have good IT skills it's not difficult to pick up.

Saggarmakersbottomknocker · 07/05/2007 17:35

If you're thinking of school admin, I'd suggest volunteering in a school office, even for just half a day if you can find the time.

RustyBear · 07/05/2007 17:36

This is the kind of thing I mean - pay would be about £16k, but would depend on the hours worked.
Try your own LA website

mamado · 07/05/2007 17:37

I think its general practice in the civil service to be able to. I work for the Home Office and know that a fair few of my colleagues do this, some instead of part-time, some in addition to 4 days a week. Obviously you get paid less as a result!

popsycal · 07/05/2007 17:37

I became a teacher....

TwoToTango · 07/05/2007 17:38

If you work term time only and its at a different school to the one your children go to what happens when you have teacher training days or you want to go to school plays, sports days etc? are you allowed to have time off and make the hours up?

RustyBear · 07/05/2007 17:39

And how do you get on with SIMS SMBK? I'm not officially meant to be concerned with it, but I'm getting drawn in......
I would say SIMS is the only drawback to school admin - let's just say Capita are the only IT company I know who issue the corrections to the upgrade instructions before the upgrade.

Saggarmakersbottomknocker · 07/05/2007 17:39

I can as I don't work full-time.

Saggarmakersbottomknocker · 07/05/2007 17:42

lol Rusty - I'm finding it OK at the moment. Have only been in this post for 6 months - having got to grips with the Attendance modules, I'm just starting on the finance side. TBH I don't think my school take full avantage of what it can do.

RustyBear · 07/05/2007 17:47

I'm sure ours doesn't - the bursar just uses the finance bit and the admin assistant is only just starting to use SIMS.net, and I'm probably going to get training on the assessment bit soon.

scatterbrain · 08/05/2007 09:03

Someone mentioned the civil service - I am a fairly senior civil servant and term time working is pretty uncommon. You can request it - but it is quite hard to cover for the long absences and ensure continuity - so many requests are turned down on "business needs" reasons.

But yes technically it is possible. There are just over 1,000 people in my part of the civil service and none of us work term-time only YET !!

You would be pretty unlikely to see a term-time only job advertised though - it would be more a case of getting in and getting established (prob 2 yrs plus) and then requesting term-time only working. So not an instant fix.

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