Support staff are the rarely-heralded workforce that keeps schools going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parents know the valuable role our support staff play \u2013 teaching assistants, caterers, attendance advisers, technicians \u2013 all those who keep schools running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet these crucial members of staff have been undervalued and denied professional respect for far too long. Everyone with an interest in the success of pupils and schools should take the issue seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Support staff are central to most schools\u2019 models of SEND support, to attendance and behaviour management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But many schools struggle to recruit the staff they need on existing pay and terms and conditions. At one point during the pandemic, teaching assistants were the second-highest shortage occupation, after HGV drivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shamefully, support staff employment was officially reclassified as a \u201clow-paying\u201d sector by the Low Pay Commission in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Important contractual issues, such as the proper calculation of holiday entitlement for term-time-only staff, have never been resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some rates are determined by obscure regional formulas of unclear origin, which can be hard for even the initiated to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We would rightly not tolerate this situation for a moment for teachers. Why should we for support staff?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is little wonder, then, that early last year just 6 per cent of support staff told UNISON that they felt valued by government, and only 11 per cent felt valued by their employer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nine out of ten support staff workers\u2019 job descriptions do not match their actual duties, according to a GMB survey. They need a new deal at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last Labour government created a vehicle to bring together unions and employers to get in a room and resolve these problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 2010, unions and employers on the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) had agreed a draft national terms and conditions handbook, a bespoke job evaluation scheme, and a hundred consolidated role profiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Work was underway to produce a core contract of employment and a proper definition of the working year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But all that progress was undone later in the year when Michael Gove scrapped the SSSNB, saying it did \u201cnot fit well with the government’s priorities [for the school workforce]\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The result was fourteen years of drift and delay, and material hardship for support staff workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each time Conservative ministers talked enthusiastically about teachers\u2019 pay and conditions, they ignored the majority of the people who work in schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The professional marginalisation of support staff during those years betrayed a lack of knowledge and interest in the predominantly low-paid women who keep our schools running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was a culture I was determined to end when I became secretary of state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The support staff unions were excluded from the old programme of talks. Now, those voices are fully represented alongside those of teachers, leaders and employers through the Improving Education Together (IET) agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n‘We can’t ignore the majority of school workers’<\/h3>\n\n\n\n