Work refusing to let me leave

[Summerreid]

This has happened twice now where I have needed to leave during the day and work have refused, saying there is no one available to cover (secondary school teacher.) Just wondering if anybody knows what my legal position is.

What would be the consequences of you just walking out the building? They can't keep you there against your will.

Why have you had to leave? Surely as a teacher it's pretty standard to not be able to leave during school hours.

How important were the reasons you needed to leave? What were they? That will have a bearing on the responses you get.

As others have said the reason you need to leave is important here.

Well, it's not the sort of job you can just walk out of part way through the day without a very serious situation going on is it? (Well not if you want to keep your job).

IF there's no one to cover, there's no one to cover & you might have to decide if your 'reason' is worth losing your job for. OBVIOUSLY you can argue about it later, get the union involved etc, but 'in the moment' you just have to decide what's best.

I hope there's nothing dreadful going in for you 🌷

It needs to be pretty important to leave any job during the day, but for jobs like teaching, doctors etc only for the most important of reasons should you ask

What were your reasons for needing to leave?

If you didn’t end up actually leaving, then did you really need to leave?

If I needed to leave work then nothing would stop me.

you can’t just walk out of a job like teaching during the day so I guess it depends how important your reason was.

Essentially it would need to be an emergency. If they've said no and you've stayed it wasn't an urgent enough reason for you to go.

Incomplete post really, unless you had a very good reason indeed then no. I am a medical professional and can't just get up and leave clinic unless its a dire emergency.

As PP said, why did you want to leave? Without that information, it is impossible to say if YABU.

Why have you had to leave? To seek emergancy medical treatment? A close relative dying? You are vomiting constantly?

Well you are not a prisoner so you can leave work at any time for good reason or not, however you have to accept there will be consequences for being AWOL.
What was your reason? Was it a good reason I.e. elderly parent had had an accident and was on way to hospital or something irrelevant like you needed to go home to accept a delivery.

If it was serious and you had to leave you would have a good defence at a disciplinary if they decided to take it that far, if it wasn't a good reason I'd think hard about walking out part way through the day if you wanted to keep your job

Context is everything.

If you were seriously ill or there's a medical emergency for someone you are a direct carer for I imagine they would be mitigating circumstances that you'd be allowed to leave without disciplinary action.

However, you have a job that has safeguarding measures of it's own as you well know. You walking out for anything other than an emergency isn't acceptable and would rightly constitute gross misconduct therefore a sackable offence.

If I walk out of my job without cover, no possible harm can come to others. I'd include teacher in the list of jobs where this isn't the case.

We need more details really.

The school are making a reasonable management request in expecting you to stay for the whole day, unless it is exceptional circumstances (such as a dependant being taken seriously ill). Legally? You are free to ignore the request, but then you are inviting disciplinary action.

You'd be pretty pissed odd if your GP walked out in the middle of the day and missed your appointment because s/he "needed to leave" or even if the person on the till walked out just as you were about to put your shopping through.
Most customer facing (and that includes teachers) can't just take time off at short notice, unless their DC has been rushed to hospital or something equally as awful.
YABU (unless you give us the reason).

I think unless it's an emergency then you should be made to stay.

For clarification, emergency = someone close to you dead or dying.

What does your union say? For a teacher, I'd imagine being in school is fairly fundamental, so there would have to be v compelling reasons

Depends on reason, and how often it happens

Half a story isn't going to help.

Depends what it was- sick child with nobody else to pick them up (yes) or a non urgent dentist appt are very different (no).

Well your legal position is you have a job and you are paid to be there.

Why did you have to leave??

YABU for posting such a half arsed post. Meaningless without context.

Without more context, I’m not sure anyone can advise on legal position. Do you have your contract? For your contractual position?