Education Professionals Shouldn’t Have To Pay More For Their Holidays

Teaching is a rewarding, fulfilling profession, make no mistake. The opportunity to change the world by enriching young minds is unparalleled in its importance, however the effect it can have on the lives of its practitioners is a binary tale. Teaching is a highly demanding job and learning is a demanding process; just as every learner needs time away to reflect and recharge, so do education professionals. Left without recuperation time, teaching will rip the soul out of the very best of us. Indeed, recent studies show that half of teachers have been diagnosed with mental health problems.

It cannot be argued that it is crucial that educational professionals are given adequate time to recuperate. The opportunity for that recuperation, however, is not within the reach of many professionals in due to the cost increases during school holiday. As school holidays are the only times that education professionals can get away from it all, they are faced with the choice to pay hiked up prices, or to not have a holiday at all.

But you get paid enough, says Norman from down the road. Do we Norman? When politicians like Nigel Mills are paid a basic income of £77,000, the average teaching salary of ≅£24,000 (for a job more necessary and impactful) seems paltry. Now, I’m not saying educational professionals (or politicians) necessarily deserve £77,000 per annum for their services, however it is nothing less than a fact that the salary earned by any public servant should stretch as far as any the salary of any other public servant.

It’s important to note that education professionals are not the only victims of this practice - the cost increase faced by education professionals also applies to parents. It could even be argued that the cost disadvantages apply to parents even more so, as they have their little ones (who also deserve a holiday) to pay for as well as themselves. The only advantage that parents have is that they can take their children on holiday for cheaper during term time. Educational professionals simply don’t have that choice, practically or morally.

From September 2013, unauthorised absences taken during term time can incur fines of £60 (increased to £120 if not paid within 28 days) from local authorities across England and Wales (there are no official fines in Scotland). These penalties might deter truancy if you look at a single day’s truancy to visit a theme park - it’s not worth an extra £60 to skip a few queues, afterall. This becomes a different story when we look at the cost of term time holidays against the cost of holidays in school break periods:

Average cost (flights and hotels) per person for two children and two adults.
Location	June term time	August Summer holidays
Majorca	£280	£690
Greece	£300	£550
Florida	£1200	£1200

Above are the average costs for holidays in June 2019 (a Wednesday to the following Tuesday) and the same holidays in August 2019 (again, following a Wednesday - Tuesday pattern). Data compiled from searches on expedia.co.uk. All flights are from Heathrow and based on two adults and two children.

For clarity, here are the same searches based on two adults:

Average cost (flights and hotels) per person for two adults.
Location	June term time	August Summer holidays
Majorca	£350	£700
Greece	£400	£590
Florida	£800	£1000

Above are the average costs for holidays in June 2019 (a Wednesday to the following Tuesday) and the same holidays in August 2019 (again, following a Wednesday - Tuesday pattern). Data compiled from searches on expedia.co.uk. All flights are from Heathrow and based on two adults.

As you can see in the first table, if a hard working Mum and Dad want to take their two children on holiday during term time to Majorca, they will be £410 better off PER PERSON than if they went in the Summer holidays. Even if their school chased up these absences (some don’t), they would pay £60 per child and still be £1280 better off as a family. Who can blame them?

This raises the question of whether fines imposed by schools for absences are high enough. Would raised fines make them a better deterrent? It wouldn’t be out of place to think that the government actually don’t care if children are taken holiday, but simply want to make some money off of the back of it (money which no doubt doesn’t find its way back to education). Then there is question of whether the fines should exist at all, but that is a discussion for another time.

The second table shows us that the average cost of a European holiday is even more costly for adults travelling without children during the school term. Outside of the school term, there are still jumps in price, albeit small ones. That is a moot point, however, as education professionals don’t have the choice to take a week off during term time. Aside from the contractual obligation to attend work during term-time school hours, the moral implications of leaving the children you care for is out of the question. Any temptation to do so would solely be based on the price benefits of taking a holiday during term time.

Of course, Norman from down the road would say you get enough holiday time and should be happy with yer lot, and I wouldn’t shoot him down. He’s right about the holiday time being substantial but the term ‘holiday’ is badly used. Think of it more as ‘time away from the children’ and you’re onto something. It is an unavoidable fact that, from the outset, the thirteen weeks children have off school looks like a lucrative deal for the professionals that educate them, however a fair portion of that time is spent working towards the next term. Planning, along with the assembly of learning spaces, accounts for most of the time educational professionals spend working during school holidays. Those thirteen weeks across the year soon get cut in half. It seems unfair, then, that the remaining time left away from the children cannot feature the same affordable holidays that a civil engineer, doctor or journalist might take at a lower price.

What can be done about this issue? Well firstly, the government needs to recognise that teachers are public servants and their purpose in society crucial. If they are not treated with the same respect and rights as every other professional contributing to the infrastructure of the country, then the current teacher retention crisis is not likely to recede. Secondly, I would have the government intervene and cap the cost of holidays for educational professionals, if not all people, during term time. If this is done by equalising holiday costs, then so be it. I don’t want the holiday companies losing out on profits they’ve earned, nor do I want anyone else to have to pay more than they should. I just want it to be fair.

Fair is the key word, here - no decent teacher wants special treatment or a free ride. We try to instil the very opposite of that attitude in children. The simple truth is that teachers deserve a break just as much as all of the other amazing public servants who worked for years and accumulated academic debt just to serve the society they belong to. Educational professionals work just as hard as any other public servant, and therefore it is about time they had the same opportunities when paying for holidays.