According to the report, Taking the lid off term-time working in education, published last week, more than one-third of people working in education - at least 250,000 workers - are on term-time contracts, and more than 92 per cent of term-time staff working in schools are women. They tend to be low paid, have poor employment contracts and be subject to sex discrimination.
The report said that there was still an 'unspoken belief' in society that term-time work was just '"pin-money" jobs to "occupy" wives and mothers', even though people were not necessarily term-time workers through choice.
The report's author, Christine Lewis of Unison, said, 'It's not just that most of the employees affected are women. It's more than sex discrimination, it's maternal discrimination, if you like, because people have these jobs because they are mothers.'
Ms Lewis added, 'Many education establishments are powered by underpaid and exploited women in a time-honoured conspiracy which undervalues their work and takes advantage of their traditional role in the home'.
The report found that while support staff were playing an increasingly essential role in education services and that their jobs had grown to reflect this, controversy still surrounded their conditions of pay and service. Many term-time staff were confused about their annual leave and pension entitlements because their holidays were based on weeks paid, rather than the whole year.
Since term-time workers are regarded as being continuously employed, they could not claim job-seekers allowance during school holidays. As a result, many suffered financial hardship, especially during the summer holidays.
Ms Lewis said, 'Full-time contracts are under threat because of the process of change. With job evaluation there might be a temptation to put nursery staff on term-time contracts. Our major concern is that we protect the full-year contracts, because the nature of term-time working means that you are on the margins of employment, and will suffer the worst excesses of poor employment practices.'
The report called on both the Government and employers to 'put their money where their equal opportunity and social justice mouths are' and acknowledge their responsibility 'to close the gender pay gap'. Among its recommendations for change were better pay and the introduction by employers of 'improved reward packages' funded by the Government.
