FE Lecturer Contracts, Holidays and Redundancy

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Why these three topics belong together

On a site about school teachers, contracts, holidays and redundancy would be three separate guides, because each has a substantial national framework generating enough detail to fill a page. Directed time, the 1,265-hour cap, PPA entitlement, termly resignation dates, local authority discretionary compensation schemes — there is a great deal to explain because there is a great deal that has been nationally agreed.

In further education there is almost none of that, and it would be dishonest to pad three pages out of a single structural fact. The fact is this: your college decides. What follows is an account of what is typical, what the statutory floors are, what school teachers have instead so you can see the difference, and — in several places — what we looked for and could not find.

The structural fact: no national document

The Burgundy Book — formally the Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales — sits alongside the STPCD for maintained school teachers, covering sickness, maternity, notice and a range of other matters that the pay document does not. It is the thing a school teacher reaches for when a question is about conditions rather than salary.

Further education had a close equivalent. The Silver Book was a national conditions of service agreement negotiated through the National Joint Council for Further Education, and it specified a maximum of 21 contact hours a week and a working year of up to 38 weeks. It ceased to be the framework when colleges were incorporated as independent corporations under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, with the operative date of 1 April 1993, and the Colleges Employers Forum — the Association of Colleges' predecessor — pressed for new local contracts thereafter.

Two nuances are worth carrying, because the usual short version is slightly wrong. First, it did not vanish overnight: section 26(2) of the 1992 Act transferred existing contracts unchanged to the new corporations, so Silver Book terms continued to bind existing staff, and the process of moving people onto new contracts ran through the mid-1990s — one account records a college still signing the last of its lecturers onto new terms in 1996. Second, what ended in 1993 was national negotiation of conditions, not any individual's terms.

UCU's own account of incorporation is the cleanest summary: the national agreement for FE, the Silver Book, which covered national pay and terms and conditions and hours, no longer applied, and individual colleges developed their own contracts, pay scales and terms and conditions. That is the position today, thirty-three years on.

Working time and contact hours

The first thing to say is the NEU's own framing, because it governs everything else: as there is no national agreement on working hours for lecturers, these can vary considerably from college to college.

With that established, two sets of figures are commonly quoted and they do not agree:

We would lead with the NEU's figures, as the more authoritative source and the one closest to members' actual contracts, while noting that jobs.ac.uk's 37 and 24 are widely cited and also describe real colleges. Neither is an entitlement. The only figure in that table with legal force is the 48-hour average, which is general employment law and applies to everyone.

Two further points of context. First, workload in further education is measurably heavy but not, on the available evidence, heavier in raw hours than comparable jobs: NFER's 2026 report found full-time FE teachers averaged 39.2 hours a week against 41.3 for matched similar workers, while being more likely to work unpaid overtime, reporting less influence over workplace decisions and reporting lower happiness at work. Second, this is contested ground right now. The unions' 2026/27 pay claim asks for a nationally agreed 35-hour week, a maximum of 800 teaching hours a year, a maximum of 22 teaching hours in a teaching week, a maximum of five evenings or weekend days a year, and an agreed definition of what a teaching hour even is. The presence of that last item on a national claim tells you a great deal about the current state of things.

How schools do it instead

The contrast is not "colleges work more" or "schools work more". It is that the two sectors regulate working time through structurally different mechanisms, and putting the numbers side by side without understanding that produces nonsense.

The School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document 2025 — the current edition, valid from 1 September 2025 — sets out the school system at paragraphs 51.2 and 51.5. A full-time teacher must be available for work for 195 days, of which 190 may involve teaching pupils and performing other duties and five may only involve other duties, with all 195 specified by the employer or headteacher. And a full-time teacher must be available to perform directed duties at such times and places as the headteacher specifies for 1,265 hours, allocated reasonably across those days.

Paragraph 51.7 adds the open-ended duty to work such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary — which is why the 1,265 hours is a cap on directed time rather than on total work. Paragraph 51.4 excludes headteachers, deputy and assistant heads and leading practitioners from the framework, and paragraph 83 applies it pro rata to part-time teachers, with a worked example of 759 hours for a 60% contract.

Neither structure is straightforwardly better. The school system gives a hard national ceiling on directed time and no leave entitlement; the college system gives a real leave entitlement and no ceiling. Which you prefer depends heavily on whether your employer is reasonable, which is a considerably less satisfying answer than either sector's advocates would like.

PPA time: schools have it, FE does not

This is the sharpest single difference in the whole of conditions, and it is the one most likely to surprise someone moving from a school into a college.

School teachers have had a statutory PPA entitlement since 2005. Paragraph 52.5 of the STPCD 2025 provides that all teachers who participate in the teaching of pupils are entitled to reasonable periods of planning, preparation and assessment time as part of the 1,265 hours or pro rata equivalent; that it must be provided in units of not less than half an hour during the school's timetabled teaching week; that it must amount to not less than 10% of the teacher's timetabled teaching time; that where agreed it can be taken in one weekly unit and away from the school site; and that a teacher must not be required to carry out any other duties during it.

That paragraph applies to maintained schools in England and, by contract, to most academies. It has no application to further education corporations. The NEU's guidance on rights and conditions in further education does not mention PPA at all.

Sixth form colleges are the exception, and even there the right is weaker than the school version. A contractual PPA entitlement was agreed between the NEU, NASUWT and the Sixth Form Colleges Association through the National Joint Council in May 2026, taking effect from September 2026. It provides for "reasonable periods" of PPA in units of not less than half an hour within the existing 1,265 hours, with part of it marked as protected time — but it attaches no percentage and no hours figure. It is a genuine first for that sector and it is not the same as the STPCD's 10%.

Holidays

The NEU's published position is that there is considerable variation in the amount of paid holiday entitlement available to lecturers employed in different colleges, with a range of between 37 and 60 days plus bank holidays. It adds that it is still unusual for holiday entitlement to be taken during the normal college teaching year unless there is a specific arrangement with line managers. Careers sources corroborate the shape of this, describing around 37 days plus bank holidays as common, with some permanent staff on up to 60, and most contracts requiring a minimum block of consecutive weeks during the summer.

Why "do lecturers get the school holidays?" is the wrong question

This comparison is made constantly and it is confused in both directions, because the two sectors are not describing the same kind of thing.

A school teacher has no contractual annual leave. The STPCD confers none; it sets 195 days of availability and 1,265 hours of directed time, and the periods when the school is closed are simply periods when the teacher is not required to be available. That is why school teachers cannot book leave in term time — there is no leave to book — and it is also why the "thirteen weeks off" framing is misleading, since a substantial part of that time is unpaid in no meaningful sense but equally is not annual leave.

An FE lecturer has a real annual leave entitlement, expressed in days, which they request and book like any other employee. But the college year is longer and closure periods shorter, and the convention described by the NEU is that leave is taken outside the teaching year anyway. So a lecturer has a contractual right a school teacher does not have, exercised within a structure that makes it look similar from the outside.

The practical upshot for anyone moving sectors: do not compare "37 days" with "thirteen weeks". Compare the college year to the school year, ask when leave can actually be taken, and ask whether the summer block is mandatory. Those three questions will tell you more than either headline figure.

Notice periods

The NEU's guidance is the right starting point: you must follow the notice provisions set out in your contract of employment unless they are less than the statutory minimum notice periods. There is no national FE notice framework, so your contract governs, with the statute as a floor.

The statutory floor is section 86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996:

Note the asymmetry, which surprises people: an employee's statutory minimum stays at one week however long they have served, while the employer's rises to twelve. Either party may waive notice or accept a payment in lieu, and nothing prevents termination without notice for repudiatory conduct.

The contrast with schools is stark and worth knowing if you are moving either way. Maintained school teachers resign to termly dates under the Burgundy Book rather than by counting weeks — two months' notice for autumn and spring term resignations, three for the summer term. That is a fundamentally different system, and our guide to teacher resignation dates covers it. A lecturer moving into a school will find their freedom to leave sharply constrained by dates they have never had to think about; a school teacher moving into a college will find the opposite.

Redundancy

We found no national further education redundancy compensation scheme in any public union, employer or government material. The honest caveat is that the Association of Colleges' own employment guidance on redundancy, restructuring and TUPE sits behind a member login, so we cannot confirm from the employers' side that no sector-wide arrangement exists — only that nothing publicly available describes one.

The working assumption should therefore be: statutory redundancy pay applies, plus whatever your college's own policy provides on top.

The statutory calculation for 2026/27

Statutory redundancy pay is calculated from your age, your length of service and a week's pay, with a cap on the week's pay set annually. The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2026 set the limit on a week's pay at £751 with effect from 6 April 2026, up from £719, applying where the relevant date falls on or after that date. The same Order raised the unfair dismissal compensatory award ceiling to £123,543.

• Service is capped at 20 years, counting backwards from the date of dismissal.
• A week's pay is capped at £751 from 6 April 2026, so higher actual earnings do not increase the statutory calculation.
• The maximum statutory payment is therefore £22,530 — 20 years, at one and a half weeks, at £751.
• A week's pay is the average over the 12 weeks before the notice date, and you have six months to bring a claim.
• Your college's own policy may be more generous, and this is the single most useful thing to check. Ask for the redundancy policy and the calculation basis in writing at the start of any consultation, not at the end.

Continuity of service across colleges

This is the most valuable technical point on the redundancy side, and it is widely unknown. The Redundancy Payments (Continuity of Employment in Local Government, etc.) (Modification) Order 1999 lists, in its Schedule, a further education corporation established under section 15 or 16 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, alongside the governing bodies of further education establishments mainly dependent on local education authority assistance. Where an employee moves between listed employers, service is treated as continuous for the purpose of entitlement to, and the amount of, a redundancy payment.

Be precise about the scope. The Order modifies the redundancy payment provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996. It does not create general continuity of employment for every statutory right. But for redundancy specifically, a lecturer who has worked at three colleges over twenty years should not be having their payment calculated from their most recent start date, and raising the Order by name with HR is the way to establish that.

Discretionary compensation, and who it actually covers

There is a further layer that applies in local government and education: the Local Government (Early Termination of Employment) (Discretionary Compensation) (England and Wales) Regulations 2006, which allow an employing authority to award a discretionary lump sum not exceeding 104 weeks' pay and to base a week's pay on actual pay rather than the statutory cap.

The schools comparison is broadly parallel: maintained school teachers receive statutory redundancy pay on the same Employment Rights Act basis, with any enhancement coming from a local authority discretionary scheme or, in an academy, from the trust's own policy. Our guide to teacher redundancy pay covers the school side in detail, including the significant differences between local authority and academy trust practice. The structural similarity is that in both sectors the statutory scheme is a floor and the real variation is in employer policy; the difference is that in schools there is at least a well-documented body of local authority practice to compare against, and in further education there is not.

What to check in your own contract

Because nothing here is nationally determined, the practical value of this page is in telling you what questions to ask. These are the ones where colleges genuinely differ and where the answer is worth knowing before you sign.

• Contracted hours and contact hours, stated separately. A contract that gives a weekly hours figure without a contact hours limit gives you no protection on teaching load at all. Ask what the maximum timetabled contact is, whether it is contractual or custom, and how it is calculated across the year.
• How non-contact time is allocated. There is no PPA entitlement, so ask directly: how much scheduled non-contact time does this role carry, is it protected, and is it in the contract or at a manager's discretion?
• Annual leave in days, and when it can be taken. Ask where in the 37-to-60 range the entitlement sits, whether a minimum summer block is mandatory, and what the position is on taking leave in the teaching year.
• Evening and weekend working. Colleges commonly teach evenings. Ask whether evening work is within contracted hours, whether there is any limit on the number of evenings, and whether anything is paid on top.
• Notice, both ways. Check your notice to the college and the college's to you, and check whether they are symmetrical. If you hold a long-standing contract, check whether it carries legacy terms.
• The redundancy policy, and the continuity position. Ask for the policy, ask whether it enhances the statutory calculation, and if you have previous service at another college or a local authority, raise the 1999 Modification Order explicitly.
• Whether the college applies the AoC pay recommendation. Not a conditions question, but the single most informative thing you can ask about an employer in this sector — see our FE lecturer pay page for why almost a third of colleges have historically awarded nothing.

One last piece of context on why these questions matter more now than they did. The sector is under real financial pressure: the 16-to-19 national funding rate was initially set to rise only 0.5% for 2026-27 before the July announcement lifted it to 3%, and UCU's further education committee called three national strike days for 14, 15 and 16 January 2026 over pay and conditions before agreeing in September 2026 to move to an aggregated national ballot. Conditions are on the table alongside pay in a way they have not been for years, which makes it a good moment to know precisely what your own contract says.

Sources and accuracy

Working hours, contact time and annual leave figures are from the NEU's guidance on rights and conditions in further education and from jobs.ac.uk's account of working conditions in the sector, with both sets of figures given because they differ. The absence of a national agreement is the NEU's own statement. The 48-hour limit is from the Working Time Regulations 1998. The Welsh position is from the National Agreement on Lecturers' Workload Allocation for Further Education Colleges in Wales, December 2019. The incorporation history is from the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, including section 26(2) as enacted, and the Education (Further Education Corporations) Order 1992, with UCU's account of the end of the Silver Book. School comparisons are from the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document 2025 — the current edition, valid from 1 September 2025 — specifically paragraphs 51.2, 51.4, 51.5, 51.7, 52.5 and 83. Statutory notice is from section 86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Statutory redundancy figures are from the Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2026, in force 6 April 2026, and GOV.UK's redundancy pay guidance. Continuity of service is from the Redundancy Payments (Continuity of Employment in Local Government, etc.) (Modification) Order 1999, and the discretionary compensation chain from the Local Government (Early Termination of Employment) (Discretionary Compensation) (England and Wales) Regulations 2006 read with Schedule 2 to the Local Government Pension Scheme Regulations 2013. Workload comparison data is from NFER's Further Education Teacher Workforce in England Annual Report 2026. The sixth form college PPA agreement is from FE Week and NEU reporting of May 2026.

Four things are flagged in the text as unverified rather than smoothed over: the claim that legacy Silver Book contracts carry up to a year's notice, the claim that modern FE contracts typically give two to three months, the "828 teaching hours a year" figure, and whether colleges actually exercise the 2006 discretionary compensation powers in practice. The AoC's own employment guidance on contracts and on redundancy sits behind a member login and we could not check it. We have also declined to attribute the wide annual leave range to legacy Silver Book contracts, because the source publishing that range does not. At the time of writing the current edition of the STPCD remained the 2025 document; a 2026 edition was expected in mid-October 2026. This is independent guidance for orientation, not legal or employment advice. Your own contract governs your position, and for anything contentious — a disputed notice period, a redundancy calculation, a change to contact hours — your union branch is the right place to take it.