People make schools. Teachers, support staff, pupils, governors, parents, carers and the wider community. They are what make schools into communities of learning, care, responsibility and practice.
People also account for the vast majority of school spending. Any financial retrenchment or austerity will therefore hit people in schools hard.
This is why the composition and make-up of the staff of any school has been transformed over recent years - and arguably the most dramatic transformation has come in the number and variety of support staff that now work in our schools.
Pay rises without funding
This diverse and invaluable workforce has helped schools focus their efforts on teaching and learning while at the same time providing vital support for whole school administration and finance, safeguarding, pastoral care and social emotional and mental wellbeing.
Our support staff, who are often our most modestly paid colleagues, deserve to be celebrated and indeed properly paid for their amazing efforts.
Why then does it feel like this workforce is under attack as a result of merited but ultimately unfunded pay rises? It feels like an attempt is being made to reshape the school workforce by stealth.
School budgets are being stretched to breaking point at a time when the demands placed on them have increased massively and as access to the vital services that once surrounded schools has been eroded over time.
Schools bear the brunt
Over the past three years, support staff pay rises have equated to, on average, an increase exceeding 20 per cent. And rightly so. However, whereas teacher pay rises have been supported by additional funding, no such financial support has been forthcoming in relation to support staff increases.
Without financial support for support staff pay rises, the only course open to schools is to implement staffing reductions to mitigate the impact of these huge potentially un-budgeted costs or to simply not recruit or replace when vacancies arise.
These challenges will be felt most acutely, of course, at highly inclusive schools that will have built a support staff infrastructure to help support their most vulnerable children and schools and serve the most disadvantaged areas.
Special schools will also be hit hard. The bigger your support staff team, the bigger the impact a school will feel when the unfunded rises take effect - and the bigger the potential is for restructuring and redundancies.
Workload woes
It also means there is a bigger potential for there to be a negative impact on teachers’ and school leaders’ workloads and ultimately, and most devastatingly, on the success and wellbeing of our children.
Hollowing out the support staff workforce can only lead to increased workload burdens on teachers, middle and senior leaders and headteachers. It should not be an “either-or” situation.
What makes this feel all the harder to bear is that schools have worked incredibly hard to recruit high-quality support staff across a range of key areas - such as learning support, pastoral, administration, finance, premises, cleaning and catering - in a very challenging jobs market.
To have this hard work put at risk for want of financial support to meet pay rises is unforgivable.
Time for change
The Headteachers’ Roundtable Manifesto 2024 advocates the following principles in order to make things possible:
- Pay for teachers and support staff needs to adequately recognise and reward their expertise and hard work involved.
- We need a long-term approach to reliable pay and progression to secure a consistent, sustainable supply of staff. Pay settlements cannot represent an annual circus of delay and disappointment.
- Leaders must be able to plan over time for pay progression. All staff working in schools must know the sector provides consistently competitive salaries for all to pursue a rewarding career.
Whoever gets the keys to No 10 on the 5 July needs to look seriously at school funding in order to be able to look after the whole school workforce.
That means not leaving vital support staff as an afterthought but rather recognising that they are woven deeply into the fabric of our school and trust communities.
Duncan Spalding is executive headteacher of Aylsham High School, Bure Valley School & John of Gaunt Infant and Nursery School
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