"Teachers have too many holidays"

29/5/2013

13 weeks off a year that's how many weeks I get off! Some say too many, including Mr Michael Gove.

I got 9 days this half term, but I don't count the weekends as holidays, many people get those off, so that's 5 days but one of them was a bank holiday so I won't count that either as everybody gets that!

So I got 4 days holiday, however I needed to go to school today to do some work. I spent the whole day doing displays, I wasn't the only one - there were 4 other teachers in school today.

We are down to three days off and I still have all my planning to do for next term, well next week at least. That will take me another whole day, so that is it. Two days off for half term. After doing a quick poll amongst my friends and family I find that many of them have had a whole week off over half term to be with their children or to go on holiday. If the weather had been glorious I am sure there would have been a lot more people off work this week, or next week.

I can't pick and choose my holidays, I can't have a day off for my birthday or a Friday off to go on a long weekend stag do like my other friends. I have to pay extra when I want to go on holiday because the holiday companies put the prices up.

I know what you are thinking! I get 6 weeks off in the summer, no one else gets that! True but I count that as time off in lieu for all those double shifts I do. I get in from work at 6 and about 3 days per week work until Midnight. Every Sunday I spend planning - that's about 48 Sundays. 6 weeks holiday is only 30 days off work. I'll have an extra long Christmas holiday to use up the other 18. Thanks very much!

Next time you complain about the amount of time teachers have off work think about how much work they do at home too!

28 Comments

Rebecca

29/5/2013 11:42:55 am

Don't forget reports! That's at least 2 days worth of work!

Paula

29/5/2013 11:45:27 am

I have spent the whole half term writing reports so far and doing other school work. I have worked every day including the weekend and the bank holiday. A week off would be lovely!

Bobby

29/5/2013 11:54:37 am

Don't vote for Mick Gove at the next election

Rob

29/5/2013 12:23:22 pm

Indeed!

Jonathan link

3/12/2013 10:16:31 am

you are there Rob!! :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Seza

29/5/2013 11:58:13 am

I love this. I have not had a full school holiday off this year yet - and I got married in the Christmas holiday - I didn't even take that full break.

Caz

29/5/2013 12:00:03 pm

6 weeks? I finish on July 24th and go back August 27nd, yes that's right bank holiday Tuesday. So that's 4 and a half weeks? Or 22 days to pay the higher holiday prices, and all that planning for a new academic year.....

29/5/2013 12:23:56 pm

I think ours is less than 6 weeks too! But it is normally 6 weeks.

Kim

29/5/2013 12:40:46 pm

I'm not a teacher and whilst most of your comments are valid I find the 'everybody gets bank holidays off' one rather shortsighted. I am a waitress, my partner a chef and on those lazy sometimes sunny bank holidays we spend 12 hours on our feet, work our fingers to the bone and pull extra hours to serve those of you lucky enough to have that day off. So, if nothing else, consider those days as a holiday - some of us are not so lucky

29/5/2013 01:03:57 pm

I do understand that Kim, but I guess you do get holidays and a day off a week. I also guess that when you get home you can leave your job at the door and not have to plan and get ready for the next day. PS I always tip

Jackie

23/7/2013 01:56:49 pm

Don't you get time in lieu or time and a half for working bank holidays?

Clare

29/5/2013 01:01:00 pm

Having been an LSA for 10 years and having many teacher friends, I knew that some of my 'holiday' time would be spent planning, resourcing and arranging classrooms. However, I was totally unprepared for the length of my working week: 47.5 hours minimum at school followed by at least another 30 hours at home totalling 77.5 hours. If you calculate these hours over 39 weeks and then divide by 48 weeks, it still comes out at a 63 hour working week. I accept that some is due to being a mature NQT and certain things take me a bit longer than someone younger, however much of it is due to the school where I work. This school that has decided to inflict unannounced observations the first week back after half term for any afternoon lesson (not maths/literacy) and also sends out 3 reports each year and has decided to change the format for the final report. The newer teaching staff feel totally unappreciated and the established staff have not taught anywhere else!

I have decided that this is not quite the norm and am moving schools in September!

29/5/2013 01:09:04 pm

I think it is becoming the norm

Jenny Clarke link

19/3/2018 12:06:08 pm

Teachers seem to forget they are not paid for the 'holidays'. The time paid for is term time plus some directed activities. Pay is averaged out over the year, but it is actually only for the 1265 hours plus some directed time (e.g. parents' evenings, staff meetings etc - not putting up displays in the holidays or indeed planning in the holidays).

Siân

29/5/2013 01:52:13 pm

Clare, you need to speak with your union rep. Workload becoming the norm is not necessarily right.

29/5/2013 03:14:15 pm

I have - my school is very well known to the local union rep! He says bad practice but not illegal!
School is small - 5 classes - and nobody is prepared to be the rep and not all are members of any union. Staff who have stood up to the head in the past are no longer there as were deemed trouble makers and lives were made a misery so they left. The 2 senior teachers have never worked anywhere else (1 for 12 years, the other, who is being groomed for deputy headship in a year or so has been there for 6). I am going back to my training school where demands on time outside the classroom are slightly more reasonable.

29/5/2013 04:55:02 pm

If the ave teachers salary (by the governments own stats from the DfE website) is £38903, divide that into 52 (even teachers have to shop for food and pay gas bills for 52 weeks a year), then minus Tax at whatever rate, then minus national Insurance, pension contributions, mortgage, gas, electric water, food, and all the other stuff that everyone else needs too... how much would that leave ish?, consider no overtime payments, no holiday pay, (its a salary), no double time, no time and a half, for staying after at parents evenings, for the oversees trips in their own time, (their own time off, away from their own family)....

30/5/2013 03:58:30 am

:) Bobby doesn't say it the DfE says it http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/careers/payandpensions/a00201183/salary, I'm not sure what type of average it is, tho!
Coming from a commercial / industrial background, if trained teachers were to charge their employer or be paid "by the hour" I'm guessing it'd cost a bit more than it does at the moment and I can see them wanting to take their holidays whenever they can throughout the year, not when they're told too, it might cause a bit of worry too, who's going to cover their class? But that's not my worry, if that's what the public want. Good luck with that one.

Pete Yeomans link

30/5/2013 03:02:04 am

Hi Rob,

You are right, you have little choice over your holiday dates. Bobby says the average salary for a teacher is £38K

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/nov/24/wages-britain-ashe-mapped#zoomed-picture would suggest that £38k is greater than the average wage in every area of the UK except Westminster. The families who took the week off, used up nearly 15% of their annual leave allowance.

Truth: Teachers are paid in the top 10% of wages in 7 of 9 UK regions....hard work & long hours go with that level of pay.

PS how do you fit in time to work on your shed brand?

30/5/2013 03:10:40 am

Morning Pete, I am not complaining about pay or number of working hours merely the public's view that teachers get loads of time off doing nothing! .

If you follow literacy shed closely you will find that most updates come between 11pm and 2am luckily I don't need much sleep.

dublin stu

16/7/2013 08:34:54 pm

Wow. Teachers get too many holidays, cops sit and eat donuts all day, city workers only know how to lean on shovels, and pilots are all drunks. If you guys don't lighten up and take a ribbing like everybody else, this very well educated world is going to run out of punch lines in a real hurry. Thanks for what you do but jebus you gotta take it easy before we start calling you babies, not baby-sitters.

Kel

23/7/2013 01:06:18 pm

Well 2 days into my summer holiday and I'm desperately trying to get as much planning done for next term as I can so that I can spend 3 weeks with the kids before spending the last 2 weeks in school making resources, sorting the classroom, putting up displays etc.

My kids get very jealous of the time I spend with everyone else's (or planning) so I like to spend at least 3 weeks of the year with them and have nothing to do with work. I wouldn't mind so much if I could spend weekends with them.

And I look forward to the day that I earn £38k!!!

Tim

23/7/2013 02:20:58 pm

My response to people who think teachers' are too long and their working is too short is quite simply, "come and join us". By the way, I don't earn anywhere near £38,000 pa!

Rodger de Lodgerley

20/7/2015 12:42:18 am

Blah blah blah! I work hard, i work long hours, I take work home!!! Im fed up of hearing it!!! 13 weeks is to much holiday full stop.
Just glad doctor's and nurses and fire service staff, the police force dont need 6 weeks of to recuperate during the summer because then what state would the country be in through the summer months! The armed forces dont get that much time off on return from active duty!!
Teachers unfortunately live in a bubble and think there job and the HR regulated work place is the real world!!
I work at a school and witness this first hand every day im sorry the bubble needs to burst.
I like most people work hard and make do on 25 days off a year and I dont strike every chance I get.(for an extra day shopping) And If I hear some one complaining about going in to work out of contracted hours to catch up or prepare for future work well all I will say is if I cant do the job that im paid to do in the hours given to me then I get my p45 like every other person employed in world!!

Kat

21/3/2016 09:11:21 am

I get paid for 25 hours per week but work in excess of 60. The holidays are great but are actually in lieu of all the extra unpaid work teachers do. I would happily give up the holidays if I was paid an hourly rate for the work I do.
The government knows when they're onto a good thing!

16/10/2021 09:30:40 pm

As I read everything from the article to what individual teachers are saying in their comments, it sounds no different than active duty military. AD military works 24/7, their work doesn't stop when they get home, they are having to write reports, EPRs, etc at home, and prep for the next work day or work that's ahead like TDYs, extra mandatory training, deployments. They don't get paid over time when they are expected (volun-told) to stay late at work to fit more into the day they were expected to get done, but really there is a limit to how much work can get done in one day, but they don't care about that.
You only earn 2.5 days off per month.
Don't always get Christmas off every year, had to work it while someone else got that week off.. and if we do get off for Christmas we only get a week.
On top of that we don't get to have an opinion or a voice, if we do we run the risk of getting in trouble and it's not just a slap on the wrist. (Could lose job, bad discharge, or in trouble with the law and jail time.) Meanwhile, teachers can say what they want, teach the kids what they want, protest when they are not happy or not getting enough days off.
So teachers, please stop acting like your job is harder than anyone else out there and you don't get enough time off..
This is why you really need to love your job as a teacher.. if you don't you might want to seriously consider if it is the right job for you.
Consider this, that it is harder on a parent in our position (military job) when you have a child who is home more than should be in school and it is hard on the parent when they have to work and can't get off. The school our child is currently going to, does let them off too much to where I do have to question is this necessary?
2 weeks for Christmas, Let off from May 4 until August 28 for summer, on top of that every Friday of every week they are off, not to mention extra random days they are off from school that is not a holidays.

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Robert

17/10/2021 09:58:08 am

Teachers (and non teaching staff) will have contractual hours, depending on what those hours are will depending on the hours / days worked. IF those full-time teachers in maintained workplaces are contracted to 1265 hours over 195 days there contract is fulfilled any more hours will be unpaid. Those in independent, non-maintained workplaces and non-teachers will work their contracted hours, anything more might be paid as overtime in some way.
Do teachers get any more 'holidays' than anybody else or are they simply contracted to work at specific times of the year for a certain number of hours?

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