School aged kids - what's the best way to work?

[Lollyloup91]

DS goes to school next year. I have another DC in nursery.

What do other parents suggest is the best way to work? This would be part-time, I currently do 4 full days.

3 full days inc breakfast and after school club?

5 shorter days working 9-2:30?

Or some other combination..?

And how do you get by with school hols?
How do DC feel about wraparound etc?

Would love to have a plan in place with employer sooner rather than later?

Didn't mean to do the last ? ☺️

Personally I'd go with 9-230 daily as you'll save on before/after school

School holidays use annual leave split between me ex husband and my mum

But others prefer to have days at home without their kids to have "me" time

Horses for courses depends on you and your kids

It is all personal preference but I would opt for the 5 shorter days.

You will save a lot in breakfast/after school club and also be there for your children.

I'd rather work 3 full days and have a longer break, but I think while my children were in primary I'd opt for the 5 shorter days

We both do 4 full days so 3 days in wraparound.

My kids both really enjoy the wraparound and have made friends in different year groups etc.

We can cover a lot of school holidays with leave and use clubs for 3 weeks or so.

I think it depends on your area and what the provision is like and on your kids.

I was expecting to find it much harder based on what I read on here but it's been absolutely fine.

How much will you lose in pension growth and salary compared to the saving on the cost of wraparound care by reducing your hours further?

If your DC are happy with nursery, why would wraparound care for school be an issue? Why can't you continue 4 full days?

I don't really understand what you're trying to achieve by reducing your hours further so it's difficult to comment on the patterns.

Don't forget you can use unpaid parental leave too for school holidays - between parental leave, annual leave and holiday clubs you should be able to make it work.

www.gov.uk/parental-leave

There are a few reasons why we prefer full days and they aren't all hating our children and being selfish

School holidays - we can spend full days off every week with our children

Inset days - if they don't fall on our non working days, we can switch days, and save leave for the holidays

School events and trips, we can usually move our days to cover.

And yeah we get a bit of me time to be selfish horrible parents 😀

I’ve always worked full time - no family in the uk. We used breakfast, after school and holiday clubs with DH and I splitting collecting and dropping off, depending upon our work schedule.