Majority of TAs "thinking of leaving"

More than half of teaching assistants are considering leaving their jobs, and one in ten is actively looking for a new job, according to a survey.

Nearly 500 TA members of Unison took part in the unpublished poll, and two out of three reported that their workload had increased over the past 12 months. More than half the group said they did at least four hours of unpaid overtime a week.

The average take home pay of the full-time TAs in the survey was £978 a month. About half took home less than £1000 a month, while just under half took home between £1000 and £1500.

56 per cent said they were considering leaving their current positions, 23 per cent were seriously considering it, and more than half of these were looking for a new position.

Asked what changes would improve the service they provide, two thirds of the TAs said a greater recognition of their imput.

School kitchens close to breaking point says union

School meals staff are under intolerable pressure because of the switch to healthier dinners says their trade union.
The change from convenience to fresh foods means a sharp increase in workload and skills needed by staff, says Unison. These include extra cooking, cleaning and stock control duties. But the changes have not been matched by more pay, training or staffing hours.
A survey of school meals staff found nine out of ten said work pressures had increased since they were expected to cook meals from scratch. Barely one in twenty said extra staff had been taken on, and nearly half had no extra training.
School meals staff are also worked that the school kitchen has become more dangerous with people moving around and working under intense pressure. There is more cleaning needed, and if it is not done properly the health of children who eat the lunches could be at risk.
Unison's head of education Christina McAnea said the union was shocked by the outpouring of anger that came back in the survey. "Many are forced to work unpaid overtime just to get the meals ready."
Unison is recommending immediate risk assessments of school kitchens, and a review of cleaning standards and staffing levels.
It also wants more training for staff, and is calling on the Training and Development Agency (TDA) to develop a course for school kitchen managers.
Voices From the School Kitchen
The impact of school reform on staff

Chair appointed to new support staff pay body

The government has appointed an independent chair to set up the new body which will oversee school support staff pay and conditions.

The Schools Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB)will be underpinned by new legislation. The new law will also compel schools to abide by the national workforce agreement, designed to free up teachers from other responsibilities.

Under the agreement, teachers were supposed to have 10% of their time for Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA), and not to have to cover for absent colleagues for more than 38 hours a year. But the government says some teachers are still being expected to cover for absent colleagues during their own PPA time.

The SSNB would give a bigger voice to more than 300,000 school support staff, and will establish a separate negotiating formum for support staff pay and conditions "where the specific role they play is recognised and reflected fairly and openly accross all schools", said a government statement.

"The national framework will facilitate a much greater degree of clarity and consistency in the terms and conditions of support staff nationwide than is possible under the current arrangements, while still allowing employers sufficient flexibility to meet their local needs."

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said, "This is a very important development. Professional and support staff in schools deserve fair pay and the hard work starts now to make sure the new negotiating body can deliver this."

The chair of the new body is Philip Ashmore, currently a member the NHS Pay Review Body, responsible for making pay recommendations for 1.2 million NHS staff.

Unpaid overtime by TAs must stop, schools told

Schools have been told by an official committee to change the way they employ teaching assistants.

The Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group (WAMG) – made up of government, employers’ and union representatives – has issued new guidelines in response to worries about the way support staff are being used in some schools.

TAs are being required to take on responsibilities they are not appropriately trained or skilled for in some schools, it says. In primary schools, support staff who have not been trained to HLTA level (including in behaviour management) should not be used to cover planned or unplanned teacher absences even in the short term, says the guidance.

They are also being expected to do unpaid “overtime” which is unacceptable says the WAMG. If a TA’s working arrangements do not fully cover the work required of the post there should be “a proper discussion” to resolve the issue. This could include paying overtime, extended their contractual hours and pay, or getting another member of staff to do the extra work, says the guidance.

The new guidance also says that too many HLTAs are being hired on “split” contracts – in which they are paid as HLTAs for some of their time and at a lower rate as basic teaching assistants for the rest.

Schools are taking too a narrow view of the HLTA role – seeing it only in connection with teachers’ PPA time. This means the skills of teaching assistants with HLTA status are not being fully used to raise standards, as intended.

Casual arrangements in which TAs who have achieved HLTA status are given extra pay only for the hours they work with whole classes “are not in line with the aims of workforce reform and the principles of the National Agreement”, says the guidance.

“The National Agreement explicitly recognises that support staff should receive remuneration that reflects their level of training, skills and responsibilities – and this is particularly important as higher level roles develop.”

The guidance also says schools should review the use of term-time only contracts. These now cover the majority of permanent support staff, but they are sometimes issued “inconsistently, without transparency, and can be applied disproportionately to part-time staff.” The new national negotiating body for support staff in England, due to start work this year, will be looking at the issue of term time only contracts.

The Appropriate Deployment of Support Staff in Schools. Department for Children, Schools and Families July 2008. www.dcsf.gov.uk

Striking TAs "determined"

Just before the summer holidays is not a good time to lose two days pay. But thousands of teaching assistants have decided to do it anyway by taking part in the local government pay strike.
On the second day of the strike, hundreds of schools have been forced to close again because of the industrial action by support staff.
Pictured here are TAs on the picket line at Jubilee School in the London Borough of Hackney. Twenty eight teaching assistants at the school have joined the strike, closing the school along with eleven others in the borough, according to Unison.
Unison says, "Many UNISON members are low-paid, part-time women workers, struggling to pay the bills - losing two days pay for strike action is not something we do lightly. We are striking because the employers won't even consider talking to us about a better offer.
"We know that the services we provide are essential to our community, and that shutting them down for two days will cause disruption and we're genuinely sorry if you are inconvenienced. We just can't afford another pay cut.
And unless we get a fair settlement on pay, local communities will suffer too. Services will simply get worse as councils continue to lose committed staff and struggle to find new employees prepared to work for such low pay."

Unions plead for new pay talks

Unions have made a last minute appeal to local government employers to re-open pay talks and head off next week’s strike.

Teaching assistants are among 600,000 employees set to take industrial action on July 16^th and 17^th in protest at a below-inflation pay offer.

Giant billboards were delivered to the Local Government Association (LGA) saying “2.45% - it’s a shame”.

Heather Wakefield, the union’s head of local government, said Ms Wakefield added: "Our members have families and the employers must realise that they cannot ride out another winter of choosing between basics such as putting food on their tables or paying their energy bills."

LGA chief Simon Milton told local government leaders earlier this month, “I am sure we all regret that our unions have decided to take industrial action. But as there is no additional government grant, we cannot offer more than we already have as to do so would mean cuts in services or unacceptable council tax rises. I therefore call on the unions to end their dispute swiftly.”

Unison members vote to strike

Schools could close as teaching assistants in England, Wales and Northern Ireland take strike action over pay

Public sector union Unison – which represents 200,000 school support staff across the UK – has called a two day strike of its local government members - including TAs - on July 16^th and 17^th.

According to the union, 55% of its local government members voted in a ballot for strike action over the government’s 2.45% pay offer.

Almost 250,000 of those balloted earn less than £6.50 an hour, and three quarters of those are women, says the union.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said they were “fed up and angry that they are expected to accept pay cut after pay cut, while bread and butter prices go through the roof.

“Most of them are low paid workers who are hit hardest by food and fuel price hikes, and they see the unfairness of boardroom bonanzas.”

In Scotland Unison members are to be balloted for industrial action after rejecting a three year offer worth 2.5% a year.

New pay body to define TA roles

Work is to start in September on defining TA roles and responsibilities.

Schools minister Jim Knight said a new negotiating body for school support staff will provide “national consistency” to the way school support staff are deployed and paid.

“Support staff are having an increasing role in supporting teachers – both inside the classroom and out. However it is important to ensure that tasks are properly allocated and that staff are fairly rewarded for the work they do” said the minister.

“Roles need to be clearly defined and there must be real consistency between the different roles, and across the national picture.”

The DCSF says that by September the new pay body will have an independent chair, and a framework.

TAs "paying the price" for school workforce remodelling

Teaching assistants are carrying out higher level responsibilities without HLTA posts or rewards, says a report from the trade union Unison.

More than one in three TAs said their job included HLTA duties, but only 6% had even part-time HLTA status.

"There is strong evidence that schools are not appointing HLTAs when they could or perhaps should, and are relying on other support staff to carry out this kind of higher level work

"Some members of the school support staff workforce are therefore paying the price for remodelling in lower salaries", says the report.

The survey was based on evidence from more than 1000 members of Unison, and the managers of 200 schools.

Two thirds of the support staff in the survey said their job content had changed as a result of school workforce remodelling. One in ten said they were doing teaching duties - teaching whole classes, setting work for supply teachers, monitoring children's work and marking for part of the time.

There was a "worrying blurring" of the roles of covering for a teacher during an unplanned absence, and time-tabled teaching by someone in an HLTA role, says the report.

About four out of ten have received some sort of pay increase as a result of the changes in their work. Split contracts are common - just under half the schools in the study said they used them. But pay levels for staff on split contracts were lower than average. "This could be seen as remodelling on the cheap," says the survey.

Two thirds of schools were using term time only contracts, ranging from 38 to 44 weeks. Often different support staff in the same school had different arrangements.

More than two thirds of staff were "regularly" or "quite often" working on the school premises outside normal school hours, either catching up with general duties or doing distinct out of hours work such as breakfast clubs or extended schools. But only 15% said they were getting extra money for out of hours work, with most relying on Time Off In Lieu (TOIL).

Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis said: "Support staff are increasingly demonstrating their skills and value and are considered part of the education team in most schools.

"The survey shows their increased responsibilities are better rewarded in many schools but there is still much to do."

School remodelling - the impact on support staff Unison 2007
See also Unison's updated School Remodelling: a Unison survival guide

Support staff pay body will come into force in 2008

A new stand-alone national body will set pay and conditions for school support staff in England from next September, the government has announced.
The new body will set pay scales for all school support staff who will no longer be covered by local government pay negotiations. The trade unions representing support staff support the move, and want the pay scales to be binding for all state schools, as the teachers' pay scales are now.
A "shadow" chair for the new body is to be appointed as soon as possible, and a group will start work in January, ready for its full launch next September.
Schools minister Jim Knight said, “Each time I visit a school, I am reminded of the increasingly significant and powerful contribution that support staff are making every day in the classroom and behind the scenes to free up teachers to do what they do best - teach.
“We want support staff to make the maximum contribution to the classroom. In order to do that we need their pay and conditions to reflect that contribution in the right way. We want fair representation and transparency for all our workforce and this new group will work in the interests of all support staff, ensuring they are fairly rewarded for the work they do, as well as making it easier for school leaders to recruit the best staff and reward them fairly."

TAs strike in northern Ireland

Teaching assistants across Northern Ireland are staging a one day strike today in a pay and regrading dispute that has been going on for twelve years.
Strikes are also planned for three days next week, and if the dispute is not resolved there could be an all-out strike by the 2,500 classroom assistants in public sector union NIPSA
In a ballot, 93% of teaching assistants in the union voted to go on strike.
The classroom assistants have waited more than twelve years to have their jobs evaluated under a job evaluation scheme agreed in 1995, says NIPSA.
They accuse the Education and Library Board - the school employers' organisation- of trying to move the goalposts to avoid paying the back pay owed to the classroom assistants. The employers are proposing to change the full-time working week for classroom assistants from 32.5 hours to 36 hours, which will reduce classroom assistants' hourly rate of pay by more than £1 an hour.
At least one school closed in support of the teaching assistants. Peter Cunningham, principal of Ceara Special School in Lurgan, said it was an absolute disgrace it had taken 12 years to come to this.
He is reported to have told the local paper, the Lurgan Mail: "Our school has 29 classroom assistants and they are worth their weight in gold. We rely on them so much we feel we have to close for the sake of the health and safety of the children," he said.
"I fully support them in their cause and hope this issue can be resolved as soon as possible.
I have said time and time again, if this was a male dominated profession this would have been sorted out within a month."
The strike went ahead despite last minute attempts by the Northern Ireland Assembly to get the issue resolved.

Education Minister, Caitríona Ruane, told the Assembly "Classroom assistants provide an invaluable role and are a hugely positive force in the lives of the children they serve. They work with some of our most vulnerable young people, including those who have a range of special needs. I am concerned that since the Assembly debated this issue in June, and despite my own meetings with both the management side and the unions, there has been no real progress in resolving this issue.
“I am now calling on the employing authorities to proceed as swiftly as possible to implement the new gradings so that these valuable staff receive the pay rates to which they are entitled as a result of the systematic job evaluation process which has been carried out. These staff have already had to wait an unacceptable amount of time. We need to get the money to them that they deserve."

Split roles for HLTAs

Only one in three people with HLTA status are working exclusively as HLTAs.

A survey by the Training and Development Agency for Schools found that only 36 % of teaching assistants with HLTA status were in full or part- time HLTA jobs.

Another third were working as HLTAs part of the time, and in non-HLTA roles the rest of the time. Most of these (65%) were paid at two different rates for the different roles.

The most positive finding was the impact on people’s self confidence. The study found that three quarters of people with HLTA status thought it had improved their confidence and self esteem.

Two out of three said HLTA status had increased their work load. Just over half said it had increased their job satisfaction and pay. supporting learning with individuals and small groups made the biggest impact on pupils, according to HLTAs, and the biggest impact on schools was having someone to provide lesson cover at short notice, managing TAs, and providing continuity for pupils when teachers were absent.

The biggest obstacles to HLTAs effectiveness was the lack of posts for them, and the lack of lesson planning time – both for themselves and with teachers.

Lack of planning time was causing high stress and low job satisfaction for some HLTAs.

Most HLTAs are paid for term time only, though their pay is spread throughout the year. One in five is paid throughout the year, as teachers are.

Research into the deployment and impact of support staff who have achieved HLTA status
National Foundation for Educational Research

Survey reveals TAs' unpaid work

School support staff are still doing regular unpaid work outside of their hours, researchers have found.

The government-funded survey is based on information from nearly 3,000 support staff who returned questionnaires last year, and follows a similar survey in 2004.

It found that two thirds regularly work more hours than their contract says, and only half of these are paid for the extra time.

Most of the overtime is voluntary but a quarter of respondents said they worked extra hours because they were told to.

"The results reveal the extent to which staff can feel obliged to work extra hours to their contracts," says the report.

More support staff now have job descriptions, and they are more likely to be appraised, than two years ago, but one in three said they were not being supervised by anyone.

More schools now ask for qualifications and previous experience before they employ support staff, especially teaching assistants. But there was little sign that they were offering more training to their staff. Special school staff were more likely to have a job description, and had more training.

When teachers were questioned about the impact of support staff on them, three quarters said teaching assistants made their own jobs more satisfying. Teaching assistants were also more satisfied than most other support staff with their jobs.

Deployment and impact of support staff in schools
Department for Children, Schools and Families