Mate I gave up teaching 5 years ago because I decided the pay wasn't worth it. Turns out you can live off saving very cheaply and very happily once you opt out of the consumerist culture.
All the teachers I know haven't been off though. Without any training they've been re-writing months of material to turn their courses into correspondence courses and getting to grips with submitting, reviewing and marking work over the Internet, while trying to instill motivation and discipline from a distance and putting up with all kinds of crap from parents who can't cope with their own kids behaviour but want better from the other side of a monitor.
In the middle, they all stopped under orders, and made plans to get the kids back. Re-wrote their courses to tie in the distance learning stuff and planned their classroom routines, only for the Idiot Chief in number 10 to change his blithering melted mind again.
So no - they've not had 5 months off and the media as usual haven't sang their praises either and nobody's clapped.