Introducing a new tool built for teachers
SPL Teachers is a new digital platform designed to help teachers understand and plan their maternity and Shared Parental Leave (SPL), designed and built by Adam our senior designer. The rules around SPL are complicated for most people but especially for teachers. Dates interact with school holidays, statutory entitlements, and occupational maternity pay windows. Many teachers struggle to map out what they are entitled to and how long their leave can realistically last.
Working closely with teachers who had experienced this challenge first hand, Adam designed and built a fully tailored calculator and planning tool that turns a complex process into a clear timeline, supported by step by step guidance and optional monthly pay breakdowns.
What is SPL and how can teachers use it
Shared Parental Leave works very differently for teachers, yet many are unaware of the advantages. Because teachers receive full pay during school holidays even when they are on maternity or SPL, up to ten additional paid weeks can fall within their timeline. When planned carefully, this can extend overall leave to around one year, two months and two weeks.
The idea for SPL Teachers came from Adam’s own experience planning his wife’s leave for their second child. Combining statutory rules, OMP, school holidays and SPL blocks by hand proved time consuming and prone to mistakes. That challenge became the foundation for the tool.
The website explains SPL in clear language and shows precisely how leave and pay change when holidays shift. Teachers can try different scenarios and compare outcomes, something almost impossible to do manually. The result is a reassuring and accurate planner that helps teachers make confident, informed decisions at an important moment in their lives.
Designing a mark built from meaning
Adam, created a visual identity for SPL Teachers that reflects the logic and clarity at the heart of the tool.
The symbol begins life as an equals sign that is reshaped into an S. Within the form, the negative space naturally creates a quiet minus bar, letting positive and negative shapes work together. This interplay reflects the relationship between maternity and shared parental leave where time is split, shared and balanced between partners. The mark carries a sense of structure and calculation, yet remains warm and approachable, supporting the broader aim of making a complex process feel simple and fair.
The wider identity uses a clean typographic system and an adaptable colour palette designed to support different user journeys. The calculator shifts between soft neutral, pink, blue and green themes depending on the choices made, while the homepage remains calm and neutral and the Plus area uses a more confident off black. Together these themes create a reassuring visual experience that feels personal without losing consistency.
Graphic language inspired by paper and real world planning
Many maternity and SPL discussions still happen using printed forms, letters, and hand written date notes. Adam took this idea and translated it into a graphic world of cut outs layered paper and tabs. This visual language supports the concept of a working tool rather than a decorative website.
Transitions and animations take cues from filing systems with layers sliding in and out in a tactile way. This gives the user the sense of moving through a working document rather than clicking through a standard website. It helps ground the experience in something familiar and practical.
A calculator designed around real teacher timelines
The interface places the teacher’s journey at the centre. The timeline is built using ACF field structures that allow users to add dates, holidays, pay choices, and SPL blocks with instant clarity. The design emphasises visibility of each decision so teachers never lose track of which part of their leave they are adjusting.
A fully custom UI built for clarity
Although the website feels approachable and simple, its interface is driven by a lot of complex logic.
Adam used essential plugins only with the majority of the functionality written as custom code. This includes:
-
The full calculation engine which processes maternity leave, SPL, OMP benefits, weekly and monthly pay logic and school holiday overlaps
-
A custom user profile system for saving and retrieving multiple plans
-
Custom REST based popups which fetch content when opened to avoid loading unnecessary code and to keep the page light
-
A payment and upgrade flow that integrates with Stripe but without the heavy overhead of a full ecommerce plugin
An export to PDF system that transforms a user’s plan into a clean form like output that can be provided to schools
These elements work together to create a tool that feels modern and fast despite handling highly detailed data under the surface.
Engineered for performance
While the calculator is data heavy, the build is intentionally lean.
Adam avoided plugin bloat by writing most features in bespoke PHP and JavaScript modules. The REST powered popup system means fields and forms are not loaded until requested, which significantly improves page speed and keeps the experience responsive.
Calculated plans are stored using structured custom post types and repeater fields, allowing complex timelines, SPL blocks and holiday adjustments to be saved efficiently. The front end is built with a minimal component library combined with custom animations for the filing style transitions.
