Just spitballing but........

[StewartKnight]

Over the weekend, some of you may have seen that the government is trying to cut wages in schools, by having less "managers" or managers paid less.

 

Now I was thinking about how teachers are a militant bunch, and certainly not prepared to give up money.

 

Network managers however are less well thought of by teachers than their teacher colleagues (in general) and some staff and headteachers have the opinion that being a school techninian is a previlidge (sorry about the spelling, I'm feeling like crud with a blinkin' cold!)

 

Whats the betting that soon there will be a review of NM's salaries and roles, with a view to downsizing the pay??

 

I've heard that this is being considered in Cumbria, so watch out!

[KWestos]

Over the weekend, some of you may have seen that the government is trying to cut wages in schools, by having less "managers" or managers paid less.

 

Now I was thinking about how teachers are a militant bunch, and certainly not prepared to give up money.

 

Network managers however are less well thought of by teachers than their teacher colleagues (in general) and some staff and headteachers have the opinion that being a school techninian is a previlidge (sorry about the spelling, I'm feeling like crud with a blinkin' cold!)

 

Whats the betting that soon there will be a review of NM's salaries and roles, with a view to downsizing the pay??

 

I've heard that this is being considered in Cumbria, so watch out!

 

CUMBRIA - ahhhh! Can you enlighten us a bit more on this. I know we are going through Single status at the moment, is this what you mean?

[StewartKnight]

don't know anything more than what I've said, but I am putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 5!

[teejay]

Right,

 

Single Status - this is a process where jobs are banded together to be equivalent to level pay between genders, so for them to start reducing NM's pay by this method they would have to reduce everyones pay on the equivalent job, probably including LA NM's and quite a few other managers, so this is unlikely to happen. This is what has caused the refuse collectors strike in Leeds as the council have decided to band them with care workers resulting in their pay dropping between £4-6k.

 

The school 'could' restructure ICT support, but would mean changing the JD of the NM to say Senior Technician. Not easy for them to do a I believe there is a protected period of 2-3 years for this, so no immediate benefits. Teachers have been through this a few years ago with TLR restructuring and some have lost out quite substaintially now.

 

These are Labours ideas anyway for reducing costs, so chances are they ain't gonna happen as they will more than likely be out of power next year. I think the Tories are looking more at giving schools more independance and cutting costs by removing Quango's and central 'non-jobs'.

[AyatollahPies]

Right,

 

Single Status - this is a process where jobs are banded together to be equivalent to level pay between genders, so for them to start reducing NM's pay by this method they would have to reduce everyones pay on the equivalent job, probably including LA NM's and quite a few other managers, so this is unlikely to happen. This is what has caused the refuse collectors strike in Leeds as the council have decided to band them with care workers resulting in their pay dropping between £4-6k.

The school 'could' restructure ICT support, but would mean changing the JD of the NM to say Senior Technician. Not easy for them to do a I believe there is a protected period of 2-3 years for this, so no immediate benefits. Teachers have been through this a few years ago with TLR restructuring and some have lost out quite substaintially now.

 

These are Labours ideas anyway for reducing costs, so chances are they ain't gonna happen as they will more than likely be out of power next year. I think the Tories are looking more at giving schools more independance and cutting costs by removing Quango's and central 'non-jobs'.

 

The problem here of course, is the lowering of the higher paid rather than the raising of the lower paid.

[GrumbleDook]

The downsizing is aimed at increasing the use of federations and shared resources ... to be honest this is what they have been looking to do via BSF anyway. For IT Managers, etc in schools this is not that new apart from the fact that some more sharing outside of BSF might now go on.

 

The downsizing of senior manglement is looking at sharing heads, business managers, premises/building managers, pastoral management ... because we all know that these have lots of time on their hands.

 

It can work in some places to have this type of federation but it is not usually associated with saving money ... more to do with politics and good schools taking over failing schools.

 

Yes ... politics!!!

 

And we all know how Heads and Teachers feel about politics. Why do you think there is such a stress on 'it will not affect front-line staff' ... but it will. Stuff that manglement do now will be dumped further down the chain again ... just after all the work was put into taking some of that off the classroom teacher. Instead you will end up with a bunch of overworked middle management doing twice the job in half the time. Some people will moan about teachers but I would not want to see all the middle management in schools burnt out.

[broc]

The whole single status or job evaluation exercise has been grumbling on for a number of years, it should have been completed nationally by 2007 after the Govt gave the Local Govt employers notice to sort it in 1997 because it was afraid of continuing litigation over unfair treatment (pay) of female workers.

 

Having said all that; single status has received a lot of bad publicity because many LAs have seen it as a means of driving down their wage bills, a move popular with the Conservative dominated Local Government Association.

 

As luck would have it, saving money on school wage bills by depressing support staff wages doesn't actually benefit the LA, because any savings made benefit the schools as their budget is set by other factors such as number of students, free school meals etc. I believe this caused some degree of embarrassment in Staffordshire in particular when they discovered they were not going to save as much as they had planned.

 

Looking forward, I think many LAs are still holding off making difficult decisions re single status so it will be interesting to see what happens to school support staff wages when the national pay bargaining agreement comes into force. I believe it is due to become Law this Autumn.

 

The fact remains however, that shaving a few £k from school NMs & technicians across the country isn't going to go far towards the £2billion Govt target, so I think Tony's assessment is pretty accurate as to where the cuts will be aimed!