Staffordshire Job evaluation - Are you affected?

[adicken]

Well, the long awaited job evalaution letters have finally arrived and it seems that most people i know have (or will have) a massive pay cut. Mine personally will be reduced by £5,000 but i know of others that will be even worse off. To top it all Staffordshire are not even recognising me as a Network Manager and have graded me as a Technician.

 

I really don't know how they can get away with it. People will be walking away from their jobs in their droves. Mind you, i think that this is what Staffordshire want, as that will enable them to take responsibility of all school networks having technicians in schools for everyday tasks.

 

Has anyone been affected by this process? If so what are your thoughts? Has anyone elsewhere in the country been through one of these? If so what was the result?

 

Regards

 

Andy

[GrumbleDook]

What has been the response from your Union on this? What criteria did they use to regrade your job to Technician? How does your job compare to the technical competencies from Becta?

[bossman]

Andy, sorry to hear of your bad news but this is what is happening all round the country, i am still waiting here in Co Durham as i feel this will affect me in the same way. Are you in the union and have they been in touch?. BTW what scale are you on if you don't mind me asking?.

[adicken]

Unions have suggested to reject the offers. I don't know if they will listen to them though. There is a big meeting of councillors in January where final decisions are going to be made. Lots of people are stressing about this and not just in IT as it affects all admin staff.

[riedquat]

Yes, it seems that every non-teaching post within the county has had a reduction in salary and grade whilst teaching assistants have either stayed the same or had an increase. My own situation is obviously not as bad as yours as it will mean a reduction of appox £800 but this is still a fair chunk off what was an already low salary in the first place. I have been graded as "Technician - Network Manager" and it appears that the maximum salary for that position has been capped at just over £15K. As for your theory about SLT taking control of school networks, the cynic in me might think that this is to give some job security to their own employees until they all get booted out via BSF.

[adicken]

I've not looked at the Becta website but will do today.

 

Pay scales are being rewritten and i will be on a totally new scale, with no room for imcrements as i will be at the top of that scale. I'm currently on £22,00 but will go down to £17,000.

[russdev]

May i suggest you talk to your head as if go to head and say found a way to keep my on current grade or I am going to have to start looking elsewhere.

 

Explain that you cant afford the decrease as head can put you on higher scale it may mean taken on other responsibilities but at least you have got same pay.

 

Ask to see the job descriptions that go with each grade if it hayes they are using i have a copy of ict roles etc work out what your doing and what you should be paid.

 

Russell

[adicken]

I've booked an appointment with the Head about this. I suppose i will have to wait and see what he says but will probably find his hands are tied.

[broc]

You will have the right to appeal through your line manager; to do so you must identify what criteria was used to 'evaluate' your role compared to the 'benchmark' they used & build a case round the fact that they have not done a fair evaluation of your role. I suspect most LAs haven't done their homework with regard to the roles of school-based ICT staff (or any other school-based support staff for that matter).

 

A key element of the evaluation process is whether you have management/supervisory responsibility.

 

If all else fails, the unions should also have negotiated some level of salary protection; this can/should be tied into training & increased responsibilites to allow you to regain your salary level by the end of protection; it basically means you have to work a lot harder for the same money......

 

There have been some rumours circulating that the job evaluation exercise is a softening-up process for BSF outsourcing by reducing the numbers of staff/employment costs too. This of course will be strenuously denied. Ironically, if they achieve this, the difference between schools running their own ICT support & a managed service will be even greater.

 

You might also be interested to know that at the start of job evaluation in most LAs, school governors were told to set aside additional funding to pay for increases in support staff costs as a result of job evaluation. As far as I am aware, few schools have had to pay out........ I wonder why?

[eejit]

Wow sounds outrageous. The thing is you'd probably be on more than £30k for the same job with a corporation - plus better kit and more support staff. I can't see how schools are going to keep their techies.

[webman]

I can't see how schools are going to keep their techies.

 

Like broc said, this is the idea - LEAs are on wind-down to BSF where we (techies) will all be outsourced.

[nawbus]

I've heard that all network managers in Staffs are having a pay cut - over 25% or so I believe. I'm 'lucky' as I'm 'just a technician' so my pay hasn't changed. Makes me really want promotion though - not!

 

On the Council's website, it states that 45% of staff will get pay increases, 30% will stay the same and 25% will decrease. From what I can tell in my school that is nowhere near right. I understand that our support assistants have had their pay reduced to that of the cleaners!

 

From the local newspaper

 

A great exercise in keeping expertise in place and keeping your staff happy!

[Chris]

Same here staffordshire school got 3000 pound cut. I dont even use LEA's supoort, manage the whole network without outsourcing anything. I have only one technician working for me and we are doing work of 3 to 4 employees.

[russdev]

I've booked an appointment with the Head about this. I suppose i will have to wait and see what he says but will probably find his hands are tied.

 

As said head can do something if wants to for example school i know of a buisness manager joined and month later got pay decrease due to job evaluation and she went to head and said she would leave as she accpeted job for current pay only one month ago so sort it or she would resign.

 

So heads can do stuff if they need to..

 

Regards

 

Russell

[nawbus]

Being the cynic that I am, I can see that our Councillors will pass this without a thought.

 

Now just try suggesting that teachers take a pay cut..........

[plexer]

I think this whole thing is criminal what happened to giving more control back to the schools on how they run their own schools all this about being on the wind down to BSf where things will just be forced on you is ridiculous.

 

Looks like its coming up to the time to jump before yuo get pushed I couldn't live on any decrease in salary at all wife would definately have to go back to work then and then we'd still get killed on the child care costs. I'd rather she is at home with the children while they are still young but couldn't support them on a pay cut.

 

We are currently in the process of being evaluated here.

 

If you're not in a union time to join methinks.

 

Ben

[GrumbleDook]

Just look at what happened with teachers and TLRs ... the brown stuff hit the rotating thing ... and they had the backing of the unions ...

 

The difficulty is (fx:climbs on to the soap box) we need to prove that in house support makes a difference to the learning of students.

 

I cannot stress how much people need to do as Russ suggests ... speak to your Head ... if you are a Specialist School then get your schools to prepare case studies about your impact and get them published.

 

Make it damn embarassing for the LA to make the change. That is how lots of teachers protected their salary with the TLRs.

[riedquat]

we need to prove that in house support makes a difference to the learning of students.

 

Trouble is that we have had it stressed to us that the whole job evaluation (or should that be re-evaluation) farce is NOTHING to do with teaching and learning.

[GrumbleDook]

Yeah ... and didn't they think that schools dinners didn't have any effect on T&L too?

 

Give them enough evidence ... and get the backing from unions and people interesting in fighting your corner and they will change their minds.

[beeswax]

I'm going to suggest to SMT that all members of staff do not approach techies in corridors, or "pop in", as they were "just passing" our office (it's at the end of a corridor), but that they can only phone us for help, and everything has to be done remotely. Keep that up for a fortnight.

[beeswax]

On a more serious note, such large reductions in salary would make it more attractive for private companies to take (tupe) our jobs.

[beeswax]

On a more serious note, such large reductions in salary would make it more attractive for private companies to take (tupe) our jobs.

sorry, didn't see that several hundred people had already made this point,

regards, Mr. Magoo

[adicken]

It's good to see that this topic has fired up some thoughts and has helped me a great deal. Many thanks.

 

I now have a number of thoughts and options to think about, with my first to approach our Head abnout the situation. On a different scale, we as as school are preparing for a fight as there are so many of us taking big cuts. Some people have even suggested that the cuts are in breach of our Human rights, but i'm not too sure.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

Andy

[broc]

For those of us (me included) who don't have a well defined, documented job description covering our roles & responsibilities, maybe it is time we sat down and produced one & compared it against the BECTA Competency Framework. That way, we will be a bit more prepared for our own job evaluation debate when it happens?

[Quackers]

£5000 pay cut for me , on the plus side the head said she will not let it happen and has listed a long list of things she can do to stop it.