The Government says they are crucial to lifting the burden from teachers and helping to ensure that children receive a better education. Yet teaching assistants (TAs) in many areas of the country are up in arms because they feel their contribution is being devalued by not being paid enough.
While a framework for job profiles for TAs has been agreed at national level following the school workforce remodelling agreement, the Government has refused to negotiate pay on the same basis, insisting that it must be the subject of local bargaining between unions and local authority employers. However, faced with growing evidence of wide disparities in pay between local authorities, education secretary Ruth Kelly has indicated that the Government may perform a U-turn on this issue.
In a recent Guardian interview, she recalled how 20 years ago national pay scales for teachers were introduced, and added, 'One thing that I'm very open to considering, although I haven't made my mind up on this issue yet, is whether we need to do the same now to teaching assistants. Some local authorities have really good interactions with schools and they deal with these issues extremely well, but in other parts of the country there's much less satisfaction.'
The main unions representing school support staff - Unison, the GMB and the TGWU - have already discussed a national claim, which they intend to lodge with local authority employers in the summer.
Bruni de la Motte, national officer for Unison, which represents 80,000 TAs, says, 'We are currently debating whether the national claim should be limited to TAs or include other support staff. There are difficulties. For instance, 40 per cent of dinner ladies are employed by private companies.'
Local pay bargaining
Gauging pay levels for TAs nationally is difficult because of the local pay bargaining. Tricia Pritchard, senior professional officer of the Professional Association of Nursery Nurses, says that generally pay ranges from around 11,000 to 18,000. However, there is anecdotal evidence of TAs being paid as little as 5.65 an hour (see box).
Many of the sharp regional differences in TAs' pay have arisen because of the way the 1997 single status agreement between local authority employers and unions is being implemented at local level.
It was designed to harmonise the pay and conditions of local authority staff, placing all manual and non-manual workers on the same framework to address long-standing equality issues. But as the process of implementing this agreement has proceeded at a snail's pace, it has become abundantly clear that TAs are being penalised.
Since they are reckoned to work only 32.5 hours a week, compared with the average 37-hour week for other local authority staff, they are deemed to be part time and many have found their pay has been reduced.
Citing the single status deal, Cheshire County Council spelled out the rationale for its proposals in a letter to TAs. It said, 'Currently, your pay is not reduced if you work term time only and it is calculated on the basis of a full-time week of 32.5 hours. All other school support staff have their part-time pay based on 37 hours per week and their pay reduced if they work term time only. If harmonisation is to be achieved, single status implemented and legal challenges for equal pay avoided, the same conditions must be applied to all staff.'
Unison says that its members in Cheshire are so incensed at the council's proposals, which it fears could mean pay cuts of between 2,000 and 4,000, that TAs may take industrial action.
Term-time agreements
The single status process has resulted in many councils ending the practice of paying TAs on a whole-year basis and opting to pay them for term times only. Bruni de la Motte says that qualified nursery nurses could lose up to ten years' pay over their working lives.
TAs in Brighton went on strike at the end of last year when the city council wanted to pay them for 44 weeks a year instead of 49.5. The dispute went to binding arbitration and the conciliation service ACAS ruled that TAs should be paid over 46 weeks a year.
Ray Short, regional officer for Unison in Manchester, says that many of those with an NNEB qualification find it carries little weight with local authorities. 'In some places we have managed to negotiate transitional arrangements where nursery nurses with an NNEB are protected on their own grade until they get promoted to become higher-level teaching assistants.
That is what we would regard as the ideal,' he says.
Illustrating the problem of fitting the school remodelling scales into local circumstances, he says that he currently negotiates with 22 local education authorities across the north- west. 'Any deal we did in school remodelling separately still has to have regard to single status, which is being introduced painfully slowly,' he adds.
Steve Doo, senior professional officer with PANN, fields many calls from disgruntled and anxious TAs who find they are now being paid on a pro-rata basis, while at the same time being denied the right to claim jobseeker's allowance during school holidays.
He believes the fact that TAs work 32.5 hours a week was overlooked during the single status negotiations by the main public sector unions and that their role has been 'undervalued by a few local authorities who have failed to grasp the opportunity of recognising the true worth of their work'.
Landmark deal
He argues that the 32.5 hours could be increased to 37 hours in an individual's contract, as it would more accurately reflect the hours they work if preparation and clearing up in the classroom are taken into account. He praises 'enlightened authorities' such as Nottinghamshire and Trafford, which have re-graded TAs and nursery nurses, improving their pay and conditions and creating opportunities for career progression.
The landmark Nottinghamshire deal means that unqualified staff start on level 2 at 15,015 and can reach 18,450 if they become qualified and reach the top of that scale. However, this was negotiated before any single status process.
Mark Turner, secretary of the union's Cardiff county branch, says Unison in Wales opposed the move at last year's national conference to walk away from the school remodelling agreement, because the Welsh Assembly had funded schools more generously than their English counterparts.
However, he concedes that even after the remodelling agreement, pay levels remain too low and that job evaluation should apply to TAs and should 'identify that they are underpaid and provide for proper pay increases'.
Rob Kelsall, GMB official in Birmingham, welcomes indications from the Government that it may introduce national pay scales. He says, 'We have higher-level teaching assistants in one authority being paid 3,000 to 4,000 less than in another authority, one authority that has a job description and deployment limitations for higher-level TAs and another with absolutely no limitations.'
But, as if to emphasise the complexity of the issue, Ray Short is wary of a proposal for national scales. While he recognises that it may go some way to ironing out pay discrepancies, he fears it would have undermined the case of school support staff in Lancashire who recently won an equal pay case.
He explains, 'It was a very significant victory. But the comparators are other staff within the local authority, not in the schools. If school support staff had been on separate conditions of service, our members may not have had a case.'
It is ironic that the single status deal, which aimed to promote pay equality, has resulted in such apparent pay inequality for TAs. And that is why many hope that Ruth Kelly makes a firm commitment to introduce national pay scales.
Case study.
Devon TA Carol Dunford found herself teaching small groups of pupils, without a teacher being present, for just 7 an hour - and had her demand for an increase in pay to reflect this extra responsibility rejected.
So she decided to train as a teacher on a PGCE course. She starts her first teaching job in September and, ironically, will be paid extra because she has worked as a TA.
She says, 'I realised the school wasn't going to pay me any more money so I decided to do a degree.
The school did offer to train me as a higher-level teaching assistant but that would have taken more time and there was no guarantee that I would be paid much more.'
Mrs Dunford, who worked in a secondary school for seven years, says the starting salary for TAs in Devon is 5.65 an hour. They are not paid for holidays and their pay spread over 38 weeks of the year.
'Teaching assistants are definitely not rewarded for what they do. The pay doesn't go up, they have to fight for everything. They are put upon and given lots of extra responsibilities. It's about time the Government did have some kind of national pay scales,' she adds.
