In her position I'd try and acrew a days worth of toil hours and ask to take them with plenty of notice.
There's always someone needed to stay late, come in at the weekend or something.
When I worked at a school, most of the staff did crazy hours so as to be able to take 13 weeks off with 5 weeks annual leave.
Quote: Marc P @ July 25 2011, 11:39 AM BST3/10
Thanks for help guys.
Quote: Nat Wicks @ July 25 2011, 12:37 AM BSTIf she asks then she DEFINITELY can't pull a sickie. Age old 'mean boss' problem scenario.
If she goes in the following day with a cast on then she should get away with it. It depends how willing your friend is to break a bone. The minimum is a thumb because they still put you in a cast for that. Just tell her to phone up in the morning and say she's on the way to the hospital because she slammed her thumb in the car door. After she just has to get pretty drunk at the wedding and give her thumb a good whack with a hammer towards the end of the night. Then she can pop down A&E, get the thumb reset, a cast put on and some free opiate based pain medicine. The following morning she can go to work and receive lots of touching sympathy cards etc from her colleagues. If she wants then she can ham it up so much that everyone is sick to death of her, and all the other teachers are talking behind her back about how she's "making a fuss", and how "it's only a broken thumb. God, you'd think she was dying or something."
Wifey too is a teacher. As is sis and mum and dad were too.
She'd be very unlikely to get it off, I imagine, as heads can be bastards like that, especially now many schools are swapping to academies and are effectively self-managed and financed now. What Will says is true re: getting a supply teacher in.
Yes, they get a lot of time off, but it's set time off, so less flexibility and they get screwed completely as holidays away cost around twice as much as at other times.
Also, re: the kids thing: however petty and childish you think your work environment it, it is not as petty and childish as working with other teachers, who are supposed to teach the kids not to be petty and childish but proceed to lead by unexample.
Dan
It all depends on the head-teacher really. Or more accurately it depends on the head-teacher and whatever mood they're in when they're asked. If she is going to ask for the day off she should have already sounded out if her colleagues are prepared to cover her lessons on that day. That removes one reason for the head to say no. However, if she does say no, then obviously she can't throw a sickie. What I would do is ask for a day off near the time she actually needs. If she gets it, then it's simple enough to make yourself look a bit of an idiot and say you got the date wrong. If you don't get it, then you can still throw a sickie on the day you actually need.
That was my plan! She's not talking to menthough so I can't tell her.
It's rare to meet someone as devious and untrustworthy as myself!
Why's she not speaking to you? It couldn't be because you broadcast a problem of hers across the world wide web by any chance? 
No, it was on Facebook. 
Could she not, at this distance in time, make a hypothetical request and if the answer is no it will probably be forgotten about by December thus enabling a sickie to be taken?
Quote: Nat Wicks @ July 27 2011, 12:15 PM BSTThat was my plan! She's not talking to menthough so I can't tell her.
Thanks just f**kin dandy. We all down tools to help Wicks out and she's fallen out with her mate. Do you think none of us have anything better to do
My best friend is a teacher - and she had already told me she can't get time off during term time... just the way it is with the amount of holidays they do get.
A midweek wedding date seems almost wilfully perverse and rather selfish.
Weddings aren't the most important things in the world. And a true friend wouldn't put a friend in such an awkward predicament.
Can't they have the wedding in the dinner hour?