Out of hours

More than half of nursery nurses and teaching and learning support assistants employed by local councils are routinely working overtime each week for either no extra pay or no time off in lieu, according to a survey by the public sector union Unison. This has led to allegations of exploitation.

The questionnaire, 'Sustaining communities: taking the strain', conducted by MORI, found that one in three nursery nurses and teaching assistants is doing up to four hours unpaid overtime per week, while a further 22 per cent are doing between four and ten hours unpaid per week.

'Quite frankly, the goodwill of support staff is being exploited by schools and local authorities who depend on their commitment to get the job done, without paying them for the hours they actually work,' says Christina McAnea, Unison's national secretary for education staff. 'It is becoming increasingly obvious that school staff pay and conditions need to be reviewed and overhauled.'

Unpaid overtime particularly impacts on the large number of staff who work part-time. Benefits such as Working Tax Credit can only be claimed by people doing 16 hours paid work a week.

'If you are on a 15-hour-a-week contract, but in effect are working more, say 16 or 18 hours, then it is a really important issue,' says Bruni de la Motte, education officer for Unison. 'Head teachers always claim poverty, but there has been so much funding going into schools that they could change the contracts and put staff on to 20 hours a week. Staff often feel too vulnerable and weak to ask for pay for these hours or to ask for their contracts to be extended. Some authorities have introduced new career structures with better pay levels, which shows it can be done.

'There is always so much goodwill because of the children. You can't just go home and leave a child waiting for his or her parents if they are late.'

Public and private

Traditionally, private and voluntary settings have been seen as the poor relations in terms of pay and employment conditions for early years staff.

But unrewarded overtime appears not to exist outside the maintained sector.

'We advise nurseries that they should have a written policy about overtime and that there is a statement about overtime in each employee's contract,' says Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association. 'Obviously, there is a need for all staff working with children to be flexible about working hours. However, if employees work a large number of extra hours, then they should receive some sort of reward. Most nurseries use time off in lieu as the most appropriate reward, but nurseries can use their discretion as to what works best for them.'

'Better pay and conditions for the early years workforce is something the Pre-school Learning Alliance has always supported,' says Steve Alexander, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance. 'However, we do acknowledge that for some early years settings there are often not enough funds to achieve this without extra investment from other sources.

'Early years groups are often not in a financial position to pay overtime costs. The Alliance strongly recommends, in its own early years provision and to its members, that good employment practice entails staff not working longer than their contracted hours.

'We do accept that this does occasionally happen. In such cases we advise the employer to develop a time off in lieu scheme, agreed between employer and employee as part of their terms and conditions of employment.'

'We just don't do overtime,' says Lisa Weston, manager of the Old School House day nursery in Stetchworth, Cambridgeshire. 'Occasionally someone may stay an extra half an hour, in which case I will make sure I give them the time back that week and let them leave early. I can't remember the last time it happened.'

Overtime duties can include clearing things away, preparing for the next day, planning, talking to parents and attending meetings, according to Ms de la Motte. But Ms Weston says, 'We organise our rotas so everything can be done during the working day. We make sure we have enough staff to cover everything. Nobody ever takes planing or assessment work home. There is time to do it here.

'Our staff work hard and it is a long day and you really wouldn't want people putting in extra hours on top.'

'We give to our staff before we ask of them,' says Sandra Hutchinson, proprietor of the Leeds-based Primley Park Nurseries chain. 'We always are flexible if people want to have time off for a visit to the dentist or whatever. If someone works 15 minutes extra it is logged and they get that time back. I would not dream of getting them to work extra without pay or time off. That is using people.

'If someone has to stay on 15 minutes because a parent is late they will get an hour back, and I'll probably give them a lift home too. Two of my staff come in on a Saturday from time to time to do out all the cupboards.

I do not ask them, they just volunteer. But I give them two days off in return. You have to look after your staff.'

No surprises

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Unison survey also found that nursery staff, learning support and teaching assistants are among the most unhappy with their pay and feel their workload and levels of stress have increased over the past year.

Tricia Pritchard, senior professional officer of the Professional Association of Nursery Nurses, says, 'This report makes appalling reading, but I have to say there are no surprises. The whole issue of overtime has been more than a gripe for a long time.

'We surveyed our members a couple of years ago and the findings were very similar on the numbers of hours they were doing. People were reporting that they were doing unpaid overtime and it was not because there were staff shortages or because it was a particular time of year where there are additional activities such as Christmas. It was on a weekly basis, a daily basis, week in, week out.'

Doing extra work is part of being a professional but it should be recognised, says Lesley Bond, a nursery nurse at Oxclose Community Nursery School in Sunderland. She and her colleagues are opposing the council's moves to grade them along with other council staff in a single status agreement.

'For us, overtime has been a case of swings and roundabouts,' she says.

'Our head knows we will stay late to put up a display or come in early to take down a display, or stay with a child if the parents are late, but then she will say, "OK, today you go early".'

Heavier workload

'The problem is too much work and no money,' says Dr Alan Marr, senior lecturer in the education department at London Metropolitan University.

'When the classroom assistants first emerged as support in the classroom they were basically voluntary. Gradually their role has become formalised, but their pay and conditions have always been quite widely diverse and rates of pay have varied and not related to any national agreements.

'In the last two years primary schools have had to introduce PPA, allocating teachers 10 per cent of their time-tabled teaching time away from the classroom on planning, preparation and assessment, but the Government has given no additional money to schools for that.

'Schools have been boxing and coxing, so you have a lot of people being exploited. You have teachers who are meant to be giving up certain administrative tasks under PPA to be taken on by teaching assistants and you have teaching assistants now being eligible to teach groups or even whole classes of children, so there's a lot of pressure.

'There is no strategy, no over-arching framework giving schools guidance on how to manage this.

'In comparison with nursery nurses, they have better pay and better defined contracts. But the employment of nursery nurses is going down in terms of numbers because it is cheaper to use teaching assistants.'

Dr Marr adds, 'To be fair to the schools, I do not think schools deliberately set out to exploit people. I think psychologically it is very difficult for teaching assistants to say "no". There is a tremendous amount of goodwill there in the first place. It is fertile ground for exploitation.'

More information

* 'Sustaining communities: taking the strain' is available on Unison's website www.Unison.org.uk. Self-completion surveys were sent to a sample of 10,000 Unison members working in local government between 17 March and 13 April 2005. A total of 3,688 surveys were completed and 22 per cent of respondents said they were from the education sector.