Tag Archives: teachers' holidays

Salaries in vacancy adverts: not an issue for most schools

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The government has been reminding employers that they will need to included salary details in job adverts. On the face of it, this isn’t an issue for most Vacancies published by schools, at least not for teachers and school leaders. Most of those vacancies come with the salary level attached.

However, there are a few multi academy trusts that still insist on advertising headteacher vacancies with the wording ‘a competitive salary’.  I have pointed  out in a previous post that such a phrase can be off-putting, as potential candidates don’t know what it means in reality and whether or not it is worth going to the trouble of applying. They will now have to fall into line and add a cash salary to their vacancy advert.

There remains a grey area over both salary points and TLRs (Teaching & Learning Responsibility Points). The former is easier to understand than the latter. Salary scales can change with pay rises, but the new salary levels need the agreement of the Secretary of State before they can be implemented. As a result, at certain times of year, the current salary might not reflect the future amount to be paid. Using the salary scales allows applicants to  see both current and future pay levels, and thus seem justified in an advert to me.

The issue of TLRs is both more complicated and less justified to me. What is the amount of TLR 2.1 or 2a or 2i or any other non-cash descriptor? Some universal agreement on how these salary additions are represented in non-cash terms, so  they can be fully understood by candidate’s from outside the school, would be useful. Of course, candidates can ring up and enquire, but the sense of the government’s position is that they shouldn’t need to do so.

What of other benefits that sometimes appear in adverts, from health care to salary uplifts and car allowances, should these be included in the job advert and, if so, should a real or notional cash sum be attributed to them if the spirit of the government’s announcement is to be adhered to, and not just the letter of the law?

Fortunately, the government hasn’t mentioned holidays, as schools, with their employer-driven form of flexitime would be hard put to be honest about how much holiday a teacher might really expect, contrary to the ‘naysayers’ that still complain about ‘long holidays for teachers’. My analysis of the real position on teachers’ holidays has been  one of the most viewed posts on this blog. Holiday advice – no use for teachers | John Howson

For senior leaders, publishing the starting salary allows for comparison with the salary on offer by other schools of similar sizes by potential candidates either currently or in the recent past. Using that information from vacancies advertised for headteachers since August 2025, I have suggested that headteachers of small primary schools are under-paid. Are Primary Headteachers underpaid? | John Howson

Teachers still need more holidays

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The DfE recently released the results of the latest study into teacher workload and attitudes to teaching as a career. Working lives of teachers and leaders – wave 4 summary report

There is some good news for the government in the report, not least on pay, where teachers seem slightly more content about pay than a few years ago. It makes the possibility of industrial action less likely than before the recent pay awards.

This improvement in attitude may also partly be down to the fact that hours worked, as reported in the survey, have been reducing. Primary teachers were working 1.8 hours less per week in the 2025 survey than in the 2022 survey, and secondary school teachers, 1.9 hours less. Leaders work longer hours than teachers, but have also seen a slight fall in recorded hours worked.

Phase2022202320242025
Primary Teachers53.253.952.551.4
Primary Leaders57.257.957.656.5
Secondary Teachers51.251.450.349.3
Secondary Leaders54.755.554.852.8

Source Table 3.2 Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders Working lives of teachers and leaders – wave 4 summary report

My blog about ‘how much holiday do teachers have?’ that appeared on 20th May 2022 has received more views than any other post on this blog; notching up over 6,000 views.

As a result, I thought that it would be interesting to see what the latest figures mean for teachers’ holidays. Assuming a normal week of 40 hours – yes on the high side, but stay with the calculations – this produces an average overtime of between 9.3 hours for a secondary school teacher and 17.3 for a secondary school leader.

phasenotionalactualDifference in 202538 weeksweeks hours/40
PT4051.411.443311
PL4056.516.562716
ST4049.39.33539
SL4057.317.365716

Now, multiply that overtime by 38 weeks, on the assumption that similar amount of time is spent working each week during the time pupils are in school (the use of 40 hours provides some leeway for lighter and heavier weeks. This provides a gross number of hours which when if divided by 40 produces unpaid overtime in weeks. The outcomes are

Primary Teachers 11 weeks

Secondary Teachers 9 weeks

Primary and secondary leaders 16 weeks.

Now, using the 38 weeks worked, and ignoring the 5 CPD days, that leaves 14 weeks for holidays and compensation for term-time working. On these calculations, school leaders receive no compensation, and thus no holiday under these calculations, while primary teachers have 3 weeks holiday and secondary teachers 5 weeks holiday.

Of course, pay may compensate for the additional workload, even if not paid as overtime. Personally, I doubt, except for the most well paid headteachers that the time teachers work is well fully compensated, if these numbers are correct.

The teachers’ contract is not radically different to the one I signed in 1971 with regard to holidays. My graduate colleagues outside of teaching have seen significant improvements in their holiday entitlements over the years since 1971 – many will not be working for two weeks over Christmas and the New Year, and if they are, they will receive time off in lieu.

Hopefully, as school rolls fall, the working week of teachers will also continue to reduce, especially with more sensible approaches to tasks such as marking and preparation. However, there is still a long way to go for teachers to feel that they genuinely have the same amount of holidays entitlement as most other graduates.

Teachers have 70 days holiday – DfE

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Browsing through the DfE website looking for information on the new Minister of State for Schools I was diverted on to the pages about ‘becoming a teacher’- I refused to use the rather slang wording of ‘getintoteaching’ used by the DfE. Many readers will raise a hollow laugh at what follows:

You’ll get more days holiday than people in many other professions. In school, full-time teachers work 195 days per year.

For comparison, you’d work 227 days per year (on average) if you worked full time in an office.

Salaries and benefits | Get Into Teaching (education.gov.uk)

To think teachers work for 39 weeks a year whereas other office workers must toil for an additional six weeks. The DfE site says nothing about the length of the working day and the use of part of this difference in holidays as employer-driven flexitime to compensate for attendance at activities such as parents’ evenings, being present on exam results days and the days before term starts and finishes not included in the 5 days pupils are not in attendance over the 190 days of teaching. Marking and preparation at home outside the working day aren’t mentioned either.

The danger of this type of false encouragement is that new entrants either come believing it to be a fact or recognise it isn’t during their preparation course and have to decide whether they are prepared to accept the real terms and conditions around teaching and not the advertising spin put out by the DfE.

Of course, classroom management does enable teachers to acquire some useful transferable skills and with the buoyant labour market that fact will be a risk for the new Ministerial Team if other employers look to unhappy teachers to fill gaps in their workforce. But, of course, teachers unhappy with working in state schools in England need not change careers, but rather can opt for the private sector either in this country or almost anywhere else in the world.

The more marketable are teachers and their skills, the more the Secretary of State will have to worry about the levelling up agenda. Rolling out a vaccination programme with cooperative NHS staff will seem like a dream task compared with managing catch-up and staffing challenging schools.