School's out for summer...

...only it seems that summer has failed to answer "Here!" for the register. Again. Bloody rain, bloody wind, bloody black clouds.

Holidays seem to polarise the teacher and the non-teacher. The non-teacher blindly believes that teachers get 13 weeks of leave a year, which translates to 91 days off - not including bank holidays or weekends. Moreover, it's a widely held idea (perpetuated by the BBC's Waterloo Road and C4's Teachers) that teachers stroll in at 9 a.m. and sprint out at 3.00 p.m. every day. A full time salary on part time hours: utopia.

Teachers, of course, know better. But there's little point in arguing with the hairdressers and cabbies of this world ("You're a teacher, are y', love? Nice holidays you lot get") about each of the hurdles you've jumped or stumbled over in order to enter the profession. Hurdle one: the undergraduate degree. Hurdle two: the postgraduate certificate. Hurdle three: the debts which make a life of crime seem like a reasonable solution. Hurdle four: the competitive job market. I know - it sounds like lots of other real jobs; that is my point.

And as for the utopian hours, I am sure there are some teachers who keep the same working hours as a Year 11 boy - in on the first bell, out on the last bell , no working in the evenings or weekends. In fact, these are the teachers who are hidden away in lockers, store cupboards or on school trips with the vocational classes when the big O comes knocking. The majority of teachers start work at 8 a.m. and leave at 4 p.m.; they forgo breaks because there simply isn't time to eat, drink or pee when they have playground duty / detentions / meetings (delete as applicable); they spend their evenings planning lessons - trying to reinvent and adapt the wheel so that they can trick their students into not realising it is a wheel at all or, very often, into not realising it's the same wheel they've been studying for the last 6 weeks; and they work one day at the weekend - in between the shopping, cleaning and obligatory family commitments - to keep up with their marking (marking which is like baby puke; it just keeps coming and coming and you can't see where from or how so much could possibly be generated by something so small).

And if the 60 hour weeks (more like 110 hours a week in exam season) aren't draining enough, teachers then work through their holidays.

• October half term: time to catch up on coursework marking and to plan for the half term ahead.
• Christmas holiday: 12 days entertaining family, decorating the house, undecorating the house, buying presents, wrapping presents, delivering presents, shopping, cooking and cleaning with 2 days to work flat out on all the marking, planning and report writing which has piled up behind the Christmas tree.
• February half term: assessment marking and planning ahead.
• Easter holiday: 2 weeks to finish all coursework folders and exam cover sheets in preparation for moderation (in English, each child has 5 pieces of coursework and 4 forms to complete - I teach 60 children). GCSE revision classes will also take place in this holiday - just because jeans are permissible doesn't mean it isn't work.
• June half term: middle of exam season, so it's full of revision sessions and marking and planning ahead and writing reports.
  

So, the rub of the matter is that teachers all know that the only true holiday we get is the summer holidays. 30 days of wasp and bug and flying ant attacks. 30 days of crippling, satanic, elitist travel and accommodation costs. And 30 days of "back to school" adverts.