(Untitled)

[k425]

So, next September YB starts school, which throws up, erm, challenges. Currently OB and I work 25 miles away from home, at the same establishment, and YB goes to nursery 10mins from our respective offices. We all drive in to Mcr together, OB and I can do a full day's work (plus, invariably, a little flexi for me) and then we all go home together.

Comments

[aldabra]

Schools are under a fair amount of pressure to provide wrap-around care (8 to 6). Kathy's been doing after-school club until 6 since she was in reception and on balance I'm pleased with it; there's a breakfast club too, which we don't use. It turns into a holiday club over the holidays. It costs though, and presumably if you're on two salaries then WFTC won't help.

[k425]

WFTC probably won't help, but Child Tax Credits, or whatever they're called, would if I'm the sole earner.

I want YB to get used to the whole school thing and find out my after-school options before I put him in full-time.

I also want a bit of a chance to CLEAN THE HOUSE!

[sidheag]

Can you take unpaid leave more or less automatically, then? Lovely to have that flexibility. DH is expecting to be on sabbatical for Colin's first year of school, i.e. full-time but arbitrarily flexible; so combined with the fact that our first-choice school offers a lot of wrap-around care (it's a boarding school, so easy for them!) we should be OK. Apart from learning to get up early enough! Holidays may be an issue but I'm optimistically assuming not really... we'll see...

[k425]

Manchester's pretty hot on family-friendliness and my academic bosses lecture in HR and work-life balance and are extremely hot on giving parents opportunities to work flexibly - one of my academics is currently on mat leave and will return on 60% for a couple of years, another did one year on compressed hours to spend one day a week with his children before they started school and is currently on 2 years' family leave because his wife got a job in France. Both were fully supported in their requests and I'm led to understand that I will too.

[femsc]

Is there any chance of a school in Manchester being able to take him?

[oldbloke]

Only a fee-paying school would work for that, coz we don't pay our council tax in Manc. There are some possibilities, but we'd prefer he went to the local primary, really.

[brixtonbrood]

Umm, do you *really* mean 1 year's family leave to get him settled in? because if it was 1 month I could understand it - as I think I commented earlier, it's essentially what we're doing, and it's not working too badly so far.

The ability to take a large slug of unpaid leave for the summer holidays will make your lives so much easier - people have various ways of coping with holidays, but a lot of them seem pretty tough on the kids - especially when they're little.

[oldbloke]

Not so much to get him settled in as it being the only way to arrange drop-off and pick-up in a reasonable manner. If there are suitable pre- and after-shool clubs, maybe less than a full school year, though.

[brixtonbrood]

Oh, I thought you meant a whole year off work completely - do you mean a year's part-time then? that makes sense of course, though it'll be a wrench going back to full-time again.

[k425]

I would take a full year off, yes. Not only because I want to be sure he's getting full winding-down time straight after school, but because the house really needs some looking after! Then I'd go back part-time for a couple of years, building up to full-time again.