FAQ's

You can start maternity leave any time from 11 weeks before your baby’s due date. Lots of teachers start theirs to line up with the end of term so it rolls straight into a school holiday.

Standard maternity leave in the UK is up to 52 weeks (1 year). That’s 26 weeks of Ordinary Maternity Leave and 26 weeks of Additional Maternity Leave.

OMP is the enhanced maternity pay your school, trust or local authority gives you on top of Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP). A common pattern is 4 weeks at 100%, 2 weeks at 90%, then a period at 50%, but yours might be slightly different so always check your handbook.

Our SPL planning is based on the idea that holiday weeks can be treated as working weeks. The maximum uplift we model is about 10 weeks of full pay — that’s when your plan lines up with Christmas, Easter and Summer. Those weeks would otherwise be paid at SMP/ShPP, but by being classed as “back at work” you get your normal salary instead.

Because unlike many jobs, teachers have fixed closed periods. If you pause your SPL before a holiday, the holiday is paid as normal salary, and you can start SPL again after. That’s how you unlock more full-pay weeks without actually working.

If you stay on maternity/SPL during the holiday, yes — they count inside your leave window. The trick is to come off leave just before the holiday so that the holiday becomes paid work-time instead, and when the school re-opens your back on SPL leave.

Yes, schools normally need 8 weeks’ notice for each SPL block. The plan the calculator gives you is there to make that conversation easier.

Yes, as a teacher, you can end your maternity leave early and move onto Shared Parental Leave, as long as both you and your partner are eligible.

To do this, you’ll need to formally curtail your maternity leave (give written notice to your school or local authority) and give at least 8 weeks’ notice before your SPL is due to start. Once maternity leave is ended, it can’t restart, any remaining leave will be taken as SPL instead.

For teachers, this can be a great way to make use of school holidays. You can return to “work” during the holidays, then start SPL afterwards to stretch your overall time off.

Yes — both parents must meet the SPL eligibility criteria, even if only one parent plans to take the leave.

Your partner doesn’t have to take any time off or work for the same employer, but they must still meet basic conditions so the shared entitlement can exist.

In practice:

• You (the teacher) must qualify for Statutory Maternity Leave or Pay and have worked for your school or local authority for at least 26 weeks by the 15th week before your due date.

• Your partner must have worked (as employed or self-employed) for at least 26 of the 66 weeks before the baby is due and earned at least £30 a week in 13 of those weeks.

Once both of you qualify, you can choose to end maternity leave and take the rest as SPL — even if your partner doesn’t use any themselves.

It takes your due date, maternity start date, salary and OMP structure and maps them against school holidays. You can then see when you are on leave, when you are back at work, and roughly what you will be paid each month.

Estimated holidays are for quick planning. Exact holidays use the real term dates you have set on the “School holidays” options page so the plan lines up with your actual school calendar.

You can check your local school holiday dates on the GOV.UK website by entering your council name. This will show you the official term and holiday dates published for your area.

However, school dates can vary slightly — especially for academies, free schools, and independent schools, which can set their own term times.

That’s why it’s always best to double-check your exact dates with your school’s employee handbook, HR team, or local authority calendar before finalising your Shared Parental Leave plans.

Tip: The SPL Teachers calculator uses estimated term dates by default, but you can switch to “Exact dates” once you’ve confirmed them.

Yes. That is one of the main reasons we built it. It will mark holiday periods that fall outside a leave block as “back at work”, which means those weeks show at 100% pay.

The calculator assumes that if your SPL/maternity plan is arranged so your leave is paused for Christmas, Easter and Summer, those school-closed weeks can be paid as normal salary. When all 3 line up, this gives you up to 10 extra full-pay weeks on top of your core maternity plan.

If your maternity leave begins during a school holiday (for example, the holiday has already started and your maternity start date falls inside it), some schools and local authorities continue paying your normal full salary until the holiday ends — even though your maternity leave has officially begun.

This happens because teachers are often classed as “back at work” over holiday periods, and some payroll teams continue full pay until the next working day. However, this isn’t applied consistently across every school, trust or LA, which is why your real-world pay may differ from a standard maternity calculation.

To help with this, the calculator includes a toggle that lets you switch the “holiday overlap pay” on or off.

• Overlap OFF (recommended) – This shows the safest and most reliable budgeting view. Since not all schools offer the extra holiday pay, it’s best to plan without it. If your school does pay it, you’ll simply receive more than expected.

• Overlap ON – Choose this if your school has already confirmed that they pay full salary until the end of the holiday, or if you want to explore the maximum possible pay during that overlap period.

The simple rule: plan without the overlap, and if your school pays extra full-pay days during the holiday, treat it as an added benefit rather than something to rely on.

You will get the best result if you have: your due date, the date you want maternity to start, your annual salary, and your OMP structure (for example 4w @100%, 2w @90%, 12w @50%). If you know your exact holiday dates, add those too.

Yes. On this site calculations are saved as “SPL Calculations” (a custom post type) and can be linked to your user account. That way you can tweak them before you send the final version to HR.