Some one from our school went to a drop in meeting yesterday. Apparently, like Skunk said, the letters won't be sent to schools until the end of October (so next week, during half term) and that's the point during which the 3 week consultation start and only during that 3 week consultation period can you appeal.
Far too important and on-topic for it to be hidden behind the red door.Originally Posted by dgardner
I work as a network manager in a school in Cumbria and just stumbled upon this thread whilst searching for any information I could get about single status.
I went to one of the drop in clinics the other day in an attempt to try and get some sense of what they are actually doing but it all seemed incredibly vague. By their own admission the job descriptions that will be sent out to people will be extremely generic. Having seen one that was sent to someone who worked in a library I don’t see how you could possibly gauge if they have accurately assigned your level.
I can’t work out how they can possibly create a genuinely fair and representative structure given how little information they have about what people are actually doing as a job. From what I can gather it seems to be county who are deciding how people should be classed, and as my school says they haven’t been asked for any detailed job descriptions to be sent to county they must just be basing it on job titles and possibly your current pay. How can that possibly be accurate??
I also went to a union meeting yesterday. The union don’t understand why the county have suddenly decided to go down this new route of job families. They said that the original method that was being used was basically complete and was much more transparent and fair. They are very much against this new system despite county saying they have the unions involved in the current process.
I really don’t like the idea of having to agree to a job level without any knowledge of the pay that going to go with it. I suspect everyone is going to be losing out in the end!
We are all in the same boat. It is impossible to tell if we have had a fair assessment.
A member of our staff contacted the council to ask when the letters are going out. There is a process in place where somebody (likely to be the business manager) will be sent the information through and they will have to fill out template letters for the staff. Will be mid November at the earliest, and you get 3 weeks from the date on the letter.
AyatollahPies, I couldn't agree more that it is too important to go into 'behind the red door', I just wasn't sure whether the CLEO regional forum actually gets many viewings compared to elsewhere.
Does everyone concerned on this thread manage staff and a budget? I guess that will effect whether or not the council deem you to be a 'network manager' or just a bog standard technician.
I manage a staff of myself and ashman91, and I have a yearly budget, any order I make has to be signed off by my boss though (dept head)...but beyond that I am my own manager and ashman91's manager
That sounds identical to my situation. It will be interesting to find out if we are each put into a similar job family.
I wonder if they will take into account technical support of primary schools? That really boosts the workload up, and the pay should reflect this.
We provided telephone support to all lower schools in our area, as well as a handful of middle and upper schools
Here's some more info, if you don't already have it:
Single Status : Cumbria County Council
thing is, they band people together, but I am a manager of 1 person, how does that compare to a person who manages say 50? we'd be put in the same group...the person who manages 50 people would be paid the same as myself, and I would never expect that to happen.
I'm currently the only member of IT staff at the school but have control over the budget.
When I went to the drop in clinic the lady from county I was talking to said she had actually been involved in some of the school assignments. I didn’t get much clear information on exactly how they were working out the level at which people would be placed though.
She said the county were eager to get the single status all sorted because they don’t want to have any more equal pay claims made against them. If they didn’t get it done in time they would be in breach of some kind of agreement.
I asked how I was supposed to be able to tell if they had put me at the right level if the descriptions were as generic as they said. I was told that we would get the descriptions for the level above and below along with our assigned one for comparison.
She did say that on the panels that were making decisions there was always someone who had experience of the school environment, such as head teacher for example, so they would have a better idea of the kind of work involved. She said if they felt there was a truly unique position that they sent out people to shadow that person at work and take note of what their job entailed so that they could then decide how to grade it.
The head teachers of schools were given a list of job profiles (think they are on the portal) and if they thought any of their staff didn’t fit into one of them to let county know they thought they had a unique position that wasn’t covered. She said she was fairly certain that there was a network manager one on that list.
I was told by someone at work that my head had called up about a couple of people he believed were unique, but he was informed that they weren't.
I’m not sure how much input the head teachers have had, but I would have thought if county really wanted to try and level every ones pay out that they would try and stop schools having too much control over the process. The schools having lots of control on staff pay is what’s allowed there to be such disparity in pay between people doing similar work. I’ll have to see how much information I can get from my head on what input he’s actually had.
The CCC Schools portal now has the job families and role profiles on it, get hold of these, I have dipped in, but they are so generic they are of no use without knowing your job family / role profile.
The man (co) running the show, also ran the Stafforshire Council single status process. IT staff did not fair well IIRC.
We had unique staff within the school and the county spent a LOT of time determining where they went in the families and profiles.
In defence of the head teachers of the county, this is happening to them not for them.
Just as a matter of interest, what payscales are we all on as Network Managers and Technicians (in Cumbria)
My job title is 'Network Manager', I'm on SO1.
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