Term time only pay and holiday pay for part-year workers: what it puts on your payslip

The published figures

What it puts on, or takes off, the payslip

Basic pay, term time only

One monthly figure that does not move across the year. It is the full time equivalent annual salary multiplied by the term time percentage, multiplied again by your hours as a share of the standard week, and divided by twelve. Because it is identical in August and in November, nothing on the payslip tells you which weeks it is paying for.

The full time equivalent salary and the term time percentage

These belong on the written statement of particulars, not on the payslip, and the NJC guidance says the calculation of pay must be made clear there and that the employer must be able to explain the basis of it. Without those two numbers the monthly figure cannot be reconstructed from anything the payslip carries.

Rolled up holiday pay

A separate line carrying 12.07% of the pay for work done in that period. It is lawful only for a worker entitled to leave under regulation 15B, only for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, and it must be paid at the same time as the pay for the work. Regulation 16A(7) requires the statement to indicate the amount of holiday pay paid for the period it covers.

Holiday pay paid when leave is taken

The alternative to rolling it up. The employer averages the last 52 weeks in which pay was due and pays a week's pay for each week of leave. On a term time contract that average is taken over term time weeks, so it is higher than the figure the annual salary divided by 52 would suggest.

The hourly rate

For NJC staff the Green Book sets it as the full time annual salary divided by 52.143 and then by 37, the standard working week. It is the rate for the grade, not a rate reduced again for term time working, because the term time reduction has already been applied to the annual salary.

Additional hours, INSET and cover

Work outside the contracted weeks or hours is paid on its own line at the hourly rate. The NJC guidance says school based staff must be paid or given time off in lieu for INSET days falling outside contracted hours. These payments also add hours to the minimum wage sum, which matters near the end of the calculation year.

Deductions in a month you did not work

Pension, tax and National Insurance come off every month including the holidays, because the pay is spread across all twelve. On a low term time salary that can mean small or nil income tax and National Insurance in every period of the year, since the thresholds are applied to the instalment rather than to the full time figure the grade is quoted at.

The year to date column

With twelve equal instalments this grows in a straight line, so month six should show close to half the annual figure. A jump that is not explained by a named additional payment is usually a correction to the term time percentage, and the payslip will not say which of the inputs changed.

What goes wrong

12.07% applied to a part-year worker on a permanent contract for a leave year that began before 1 April 2024

That is the method the Supreme Court rejected in Brazel. For those leave years the worker was entitled to 5.6 weeks paid at an average week's pay, worked out ignoring the weeks in which no pay was received. The gap is not small: on a 39 week contract the percentage method produces materially less leave pay than 5.6 average weeks. Claims for unlawful deduction from wages have time limits, so the age of the leave year is the first thing that decides whether anything can be done.

Rolled up holiday pay that is not shown separately

An hourly rate quoted as inclusive of holiday pay, with one figure on the payslip, does not satisfy regulation 16A(7), which requires the statement to indicate the amount of holiday pay paid for the period. Without the split you cannot tell whether the uplift is 12.07% of the right base, and you cannot tell whether the remaining pay for work done still clears the minimum wage on its own.

A weeks factor that counts only the weeks you work

39 divided by 52.143 is 74.8%. The NJC advisory model for the same contract produces 86.778%, because the paid leave, public holidays and extra statutory days you accrue are added to the working weeks before the division. Dropping them understates the salary by roughly a tenth for a whole year, and the mistake is invisible because both numbers look like plausible percentages.

Unpaid weeks left inside the 52 week average

Where holiday pay is worked out on an average rather than rolled up, regulation 16 skips any week in the relevant period in which no remuneration was payable, pulls in earlier weeks to reach 52, and looks back no further than 104 weeks. A payroll that averages over 52 calendar weeks instead, with the school holidays counted as zeros, produces a week's pay well below the contractual rate.

An hourly rate got by dividing the term time salary by 52.143

The term time salary already pays for fewer than 52.143 weeks. Dividing it again by the full year and by your weekly hours gives a rate roughly 13% below the grade for a 39 week contract, and that wrong rate then flows into overtime, INSET and additional hours. The rate for the grade comes from the full time equivalent salary, which is the one the Green Book footnote divides by 52.143 and by 37.

Rolled up holiday pay used instead of, rather than on top of, the pay for the work

The gov.uk guidance says rolled up holiday pay is paid in addition to normal pay, which should be at the minimum wage or above. Where the 12.07% is carved out of an existing hourly rate the worker is funding their own holiday pay, and the remaining rate for work done may no longer clear the minimum wage on its own.

Rolled up holiday pay paid to someone who is neither an irregular hours nor a part-year worker

Regulation 16A applies only to leave a worker is entitled to under regulation 15B, which reaches those two groups and nobody else. A worker on fixed hours across the whole year who sees a 12.07% line is being paid under a regime that does not apply to them, and their leave still accrues under regulations 13 and 13A.

What to check on your next payslip

• Regulation 15F(1)(b) sets two conditions for a part-year worker, and both have to be met: the contract requires work in only part of the year, and there are periods within that year of at least a week which the worker is not required to work and for which they are not paid. The second condition is the one that decides the answer for term time staff paid in twelve instalments, and it is the one nobody has ruled on. Which side of it you fall determines whether your leave is 5.6 weeks or an accrued figure that can be less.
• Regulation 13A(A1) takes a worker to whom regulation 15B applies out of the 4 plus 1.6 week structure entirely, for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. It is why the two regimes cannot be mixed. A part-year worker inside the new rules does not get 12.07% accrual and a 5.6 week floor; they get the accrued amount, capped at 28 days.
• The NJC advisory model in Green Book Part 4.12 builds the percentage from 365 divided by 7 times 5 available days, less the whole full time leave entitlement, to an accrual per working day, which is then applied to the days worked and added back. It is a published method with worked examples, so a term time percentage can be rebuilt from three inputs: the weeks worked, the full time leave entitlement including public and extra statutory days, and the standard working week. The NJC calls it advisory and says local arrangements that are more favourable stand.
• Regulation 16A(7) requires that where holiday pay is rolled up, the itemised pay statement indicates the amount of holiday pay paid for the period the statement relates to, and regulation 16A(10) ties that to the statement given under section 8 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. It turns a rate that was previously unauditable into two figures that can be divided into one another. If the uplift is not 12.07% of the pay for work done, the arithmetic is visible on the payslip itself.
• Regulation 16(3ZE) to (3ZG) provide that weeks in which no remuneration was payable are left out of the average, earlier weeks are counted instead so as to reach 52 or as close as possible, and no account is taken of anything before the 104 weeks ending with the calculation date. On a term time contract most of the year can be unpaid weeks under a pay-for-hours arrangement. Whether they were skipped or averaged in is the difference between a week's pay at your working rate and a week's pay at roughly three quarters of it.
• HMRC's minimum wage guidance states that someone who works only part of the year but is paid an annual salary in instalments through the year is a salaried hours worker, and names school cleaning, catering and caretaking staff as the example. It changes how the minimum wage is tested. The comparison is the monthly instalment against the basic annual hours divided by twelve, not against the hours actually worked that month, so a month of full time term work does not by itself breach the minimum wage.
• Once a salaried hours worker passes the basic hours for the calculation year, regulations 26 and 28 of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 bring every further hour into the minimum wage sum for the rest of that year. Term time staff who cover holiday clubs, INSET or open evenings can reach the annual hours early. From that point the salary alone stops being enough, and the unpaid extra hours have to be paid at least at the minimum wage.

The 12 occupations this reaches, and how

Each line is specific to that trade. Where a scheme depends on how you are engaged rather than on the work itself, the line says so.

Care Worker

Homecare rounds and bank shifts reach regulation 15B through the irregular hours limb rather than the part-year one, because nothing about care is seasonal and what varies is how many hours the contract commits you to in any given period. Where that variability is in the contract the employer may pay your holiday pay as an uplift alongside each set of shifts instead of when you take leave, and regulation 16A(7) then requires the amount to be indicated on the statement for the period it covers. A rate described to you at interview as including holiday pay, with a single figure on the payslip, leaves nothing to divide into anything.

Cleaner

HMRC's minimum wage guidance names school cleaning staff as its own example of people who work in term time only and are paid a regular weekly or monthly amount right through the year, which makes them salaried hours workers rather than time workers. Facilities management cleaning on an all year contract is the opposite case and none of this reaches it. The distinction decides how your pay is tested: a salaried hours worker is measured against the basic annual hours divided by the number of pay days in the year, so a heavy month during term does not by itself put the employer in breach, and a quiet month during the holidays does not by itself put you above the rate.

Exam Invigilator

Having no guaranteed sessions is what brings an invigilator inside, and it is the variable hours limb that does it rather than the term time one, because a casual engagement does not require you to work part of the year, it does not require you to work at all. The difference shows up where leave is accrued and paid out rather than added to each session. That average is built only from weeks you were actually paid in, earlier weeks are pulled forward to get as near to 52 as the record allows, and nothing older than 104 weeks counts at all. Two exam series a year will not produce 52 such weeks.

Farm Worker

The government's own illustration of a part-year worker is a seasonal farm worker taken on for spring and summer, and the qualification it attaches is that the contract has to show periods of more than a week when she is neither required to work nor paid. That points at a wrinkle worth knowing: regulation 15F(1)(b) wants those unpaid weeks to fall during the term of the contract, so a picker whose engagement ends with the harvest and is re-engaged the following year is a run of short contracts rather than one part-year contract. Which of the two you are on changes whether an uplift with each payment is available and what happens to untaken leave.

Higher Level Teaching Assistant

Taking a whole class does not move you onto the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document. You remain support staff, which means a weeks in the year factor sits in your salary and none sits in the salary of the teacher whose lesson you covered, whose only reduction if part time is a share of the timetabled teaching week. The same hour in the same room is built two different ways depending on who stood in it. Where HLTA status is paid as a flat cash sum rather than a higher grade, that sum needs its own answer to the weeks question, because a figure for the year is not a figure for the weeks you are paid for.

Kitchen Porter

Two different doors into the same regulation, and school catering is only one of them. A porter in a school kitchen on an annual salary spread over twelve months is in the position HMRC describes when it lists school catering among salaried hours work. A porter taking shifts at a hotel or a restaurant is more likely to be an irregular hours worker instead, since the test in regulation 15F(1)(a) asks whether the contract makes the paid hours wholly or mostly variable from one pay period to the next. It is that second door, and not the school one, that permits an uplift with every payment.

Local Government NJC SCP 1 (Entry Grade)

A spinal column point is quoted as a full time full year salary, so a term time contract sitting on this point is paid a fraction of the number the pay scale prints. The NJC sets out how that fraction is built in Green Book Part 4.12: available days of 365 divided by 7 times 5, less the whole leave entitlement including public and extra statutory days, giving an accrual per day worked which is added back to the days worked. Entry grade is where the arithmetic bites hardest, because this point sits close to the National Living Wage and an error in the fraction becomes a minimum wage question rather than only a pay question.

Midday Supervisor (Lunchtime Supervisor)

An hour and a bit over lunch, the same five days every week, is a fixed pattern, and fixed is what shuts the first door. The worked example the government uses for someone who falls outside the variable hours definition is a worker on a rotating two week pattern whose contracted hours are fixed in each week of it. So if this regulation reaches a lunchtime supervisor at all it reaches you by the part-year route. Then scale takes over: at five to seven and a half hours a week your whole year of statutory leave is a handful of hours, the 28 day cap is nowhere near you, and a flat monthly figure hides every pound of it.

School Caretaker / Site Manager

HMRC's example of staff who work in term time and are paid right through the year lists caretaking next to cleaning and catering, so the term time site post exists. It is still the one school job whose default runs the other way, on 52 weeks while the classroom staff around you are on 39 or so. On 52 weeks neither limb of regulation 15F can be met. No period of a week falls inside your year that you are both not required to work and not paid for, and weekend lettings or an out of hours callout on top of a fixed salary leave your contracted hours fixed, which is what the variable hours test asks about.

School Nurse

School nursing is the one clinical post built around the school calendar, and where the contract is term time only it is normally annualised so that the same amount lands in August as in March. Annualising is exactly what hides the reduction: the Agenda for Change band you were appointed to is a full year figure and your salary is a percentage of it, with neither the percentage nor the full year figure written anywhere on the payslip. Plenty of 0 to 19 services run through the holidays for immunisation and safeguarding work, so it is the contract rather than the job title that settles whether any of this touches you.

SEN Teaching Assistant

A special needs supplement is locally agreed, so your contract is the only document that says whether it was quoted full time and full year and then cut by the same two fractions as the basic, or whether it is a flat amount added after them. The same headline number produces two different annual totals. It matters a second time if your leave is paid when taken rather than as an uplift, because regulation 16(3ZA) pulls payments intrinsically linked to the performance of tasks a worker is obliged to carry out into the week's pay for leave under regulations 13 and 15B. What the supplement is paid for decides whether it is one of those.

Teaching Assistant

Two numbers on a teaching assistant's contract are both called holiday, and only one of them is in your salary. The first is the paid leave your school added to the term weeks before it worked out the fraction, which is a contract figure and is already inside your monthly amount. The second is what the Working Time Regulations give you, calculated on its own and by other arithmetic. Which statutory rule supplies that second figure has never been settled for anyone paid in twelve equal instalments, since the part-year test looks for weeks in which nothing reaches you and the same amount reaches you in August as in March.

Questions

Sources