School Holiday Parental Coverage

[DanielW]

Hi There,

My wife and I are dipping our toes in the idea of moving to Canada, but we have a major sticking point that I have seen come up a few times and that is the amount of annual leave you guys get. At the moment I am working part time and my wife buys and extra week annual leave ontop of her very generous 32 day annual leave package to make a total of 37 and I get around 17 because of my part time status. Between us we have to cover the almost 11 weeks of school holidays and the only way we can do that is the fact I dont work Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursady otherwise all of our annual leave bar a few days goes on being at home when the kids are not in school.

How in the name of niagra falls, do Canadians cover school holidays, which looking around seems to be similar to british quantities when you only get 10 to 15 days off a year, there are roughly 55 school holidays a year (assuming 11 weeks off not counting weekends) and 2 full time working parents would only have (assuming you wrangled 3 weeks off each) 30 days annual leave. 55 - 30 = 25 days you kids are home when you are not...........

I can only assume that the quanities of Nannies in Canada is huge as I just dont see how you can look after your own children with so much school holidays and so little annual leave. Unless of course only a single parent works but then you have a whole familly on a single income and thats a totally different mess.

Can anyone explain how this works or workarounds that we have not yet thought about please

Many thanks!

 

[scylla]

Hi There,

My wife and I are dipping our toes in the idea of moving to Canada, but we have a major sticking point that I have seen come up a few times and that is the amount of annual leave you guys get. At the moment I am working part time and my wife buys and extra week annual leave ontop of her very generous 32 day annual leave package to make a total of 37 and I get around 17 because of my part time status. Between us we have to cover the almost 11 weeks of school holidays and the only way we can do that is the fact I dont work Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursady otherwise all of our annual leave bar a few days goes on being at home when the kids are not in school.

How in the name of niagra falls, do Canadians cover school holidays, which looking around seems to be similar to british quantities when you only get 10 to 15 days off a year, there are roughly 55 school holidays a year (assuming 11 weeks off not counting weekends) and 2 full time working parents would only have (assuming you wrangled 3 weeks off each) 30 days annual leave. 55 - 30 = 25 days you kids are home when you are not...........

I can only assume that the quanities of Nannies in Canada is huge as I just dont see how you can look after your own children with so much school holidays and so little annual leave. Unless of course only a single parent works but then you have a whole familly on a single income and thats a totally different mess.

Can anyone explain how this works or workarounds that we have not yet thought about please

Many thanks!

For summer school vacations, parents put their kids in day camps / day care which effectively replace school in the number of hours kids are out of the house. Some do the same during the Christmas period.

 

[canuck78]

They are quite expensive so parents have to budget to pay for summer camps throughout the year. Usually there are some sort of activities you can register your children for during other breaks like March break. Christmas times tend to be the most difficult because there are no extra activities. Canadian employees usually start off with only 2 weeks of vacation time per year. Taking as much paid holiday time as you have is basically unheard of and the executives who may have it can’t/won’t be away from work for that long. You also have to budget for after school childcare and perhaps before school care if you have to commute. School ends between 2:30-3:30om so parents who are working full-time usually have to pay for childcare or activities until they can pick up their child.

 

[scylla]

They are quite expensive so parents have to budget to pay for summer camps throughout the year. Usually there are some sort of activities you can register your children for during other breaks like March break. Christmas times tend to be the most difficult because there are no extra activities.

FYI - There are in fact extra activities during Christmas. Provided you are living in a relatively large city, there's actually quite a lot in the way of winter day camps during the Christmas / New Year's school break period. The GTA certainly has tons - just like March break.

 

[canuck78]

FYI - There are in fact extra activities during Christmas. Provided you are living in a relatively large city, there's actually quite a lot in the way of winter day camps during the Christmas / New Year's school break period. The GTA certainly has tons - just like March break.

Oh wow maybe things have changed recently. In my experience the week of Christmas and Boxing Day tends to be very hard when it comes to childcare. I know the week of New Year’s tend to be a bit better but many of the workers also want to take the time off around Christmas especially if you can take a few days off and give yourself a 9 day vacation. The demand for childcare spots also isn’t as great compared to March break and summer. There are also professional development days for teachers which also requires you to get childcare not to mention kids get sick. Luckily some employers are a bit flexible if you can work remotely.