Well said that head.

[localzuk]

But thats the thing - schools shouldn't be taking advantage of those people who love working in education. I am at a level of almost not being able to afford to do the job and live in this area due to the high cost of living.

 

And I am not asking for £35kpa... I am asking for a fair wage. I am asking that my skills and experience be taken into account and I be paid accordingly and that the work that has to be done is taken into account. For the job I do, the pay should be at least £20k, possibly £22k. £35k would be way too much. To a school, what is that extra £5k on top of what they pay me now? it shouldn't be that much. I will be much happier to come in outside of my work hours and work more for that amount but as it stands, I feel that education is taking advantage of people like me.

[limbo]

@Localzuk - Firstly - do not get me wrong, I am not one of those saying you are not being paid enough, that is your SMT.

 

Any company, public sector or not, will usually pay the minumum they think they need to pay in order to get what they want / need. And in a school this should be more so because there is extra responsiblity to make sure that the money is spent to achieve the best possible return for the students teaching and learning. If you will keep the show on the road for £16k a year then why pay more. And if you will not work for that money then there are probably a hundred more people out there who will gladly do your job for the money. I am not saying they will necessarily be able to do it as well as you do it, but as long as they do it well enough to keep things running then that is enough for many employers.

 

Education perhaps does take advantage, but only because people are prepared to let them. While there are people out there who will do the job for £16k a year then that is what will get paid. The only thing you can do is make sure that the school is getting things from you that a) they cannot do without and b) nobody else can / will do it for the same money. Then you can argue for your pay rise.

 

Unfortuantely the nature of IT is that the better you do your job the less people think that it needs to be done because everything is working as it should be and apparently running itself (although we all know how much work it takes to make it appear this way). If you really want to stand out you have got to be directly involved in shaping the teaching and learning - and that does not mean just providing the computers for the teaching and learning to take place on. You have to be looking at areas like monitoring assessment and attendance, creating curriculum resources or developing lessons. These are the things that will set you apart from "the bloke with a screwdriver that keeps asking for money for things to be hidden in cupboards" (as I once heard a technician described by a teacher).

 

This is what I do and it has worked so far.

[GrumbleDook]

@Localzuk - You are right, there is absolutely no point in spending £35k on a suite if the ICT Support staff cannot support it - but then there is no point paying support staff £35k a year if they are willing and able to do it for £16k.

 

Ah ... and there you have the crux of it.

 

They are willing to be paid 16k a year because they are only being paid it. If they had the opportunity to do a comparable job outside of a school for £25k or even £30k then they are likely to go for it.

 

The fact that people presently work for salaries lower than comparable jobs outside of education does not mean that that is all they are worth. It just means that there are those who work for the lower salary in schools do so to pay the bills with what wages they can get and possibly for a few other reasons like wnating to make schools a better place.

 

It raises another issue though ... how do we compare the job of a Network Manager or Technician in a school with that of a company? Many support staff have been openly against the introduction of a county-wide grading system (mainly becuase it has been done by bean counters and not people who know the jobs ... and there is a fair chunk of politics too) so unless we go out and choose a few sample jobs in the wider world and compare them against something within a school we as still fighting an uphill battle.

 

Remember that teachers have some pretty water-tight things to follow and a high level of accountability. We don't ... Those of us who try do it by having SLAs and by measuring ourselves against them ... but that still doesn't mean that one school is better than another because we have move boxes on the desk ... outside of education we need to look at other public sector teams to see how we compare against them.

 

Off to create a thread about measurable standards.

[GrumbleDook]

Here is the start of a conversation about how we measure ourselves ... feel free to add to it.

[webman]

You have to be looking at areas like monitoring assessment and attendance, creating curriculum resources or developing lessons.

 

Why should people like us have to get that involved in the T&L side of things to get paid what we're worth? To me, those latter 2 roles are for teachers. And that's what they get paid a minimum of £20k for, in my eyes.

 

Remember that teachers have some pretty water-tight things to follow and a high level of accountability. We don't ...

 

I'm pretty sure most Network Managers are accountable if no resources can be accessed by teachers/students, nobody can log in to SIMS, electronic registers can't be taken, computers aren't working and so on....

[ctbjs]

I can very much symphise with some of the comments being made on this particular thread. I had a tough time with my former employer ( a school that shall remain nameless) whereby I had the audacity to request a raise, providing a valid report on change in roles and responsibility and making comparisons to other schools of a similar size and structure both in terms of technology and personnel.

 

For two years they sat on this paperwork and despite constant reminders and meetings was eventually told that they couldn't do anything about it at present as all support roles were being reassessed by the local authority to realign the pay structure. They also said that they could only do immediate reassessments on new staff so I asked if they could lay me off and provide me with a new cnotract the next day..of course this wasn't possible!! In the end I left and found another job at another school and a better salary (9K better).

 

I feel there is very little appreciation for the work that "Support" staff do, however, being an ex serviceman I am used to the "Them and us" scenario that seems to prevail at some schools. I do not of course refer to my present school which I am pleased to say fully appreciates the work that you do for them and indeed let you know as much (with the odd exception). So I guess, while it is of no help to this thread, its a matter of finding the right job at the right place for the right money.

[GrumbleDook]

Remember that teachers have some pretty water-tight things to follow and a high level of accountability. We don't ...

 

I'm pretty sure most Network Managers are accountable if no resources can be accessed by teachers/students, nobody can log in to SIMS, electronic registers can't be taken, computers aren't working and so on....

 

Yep ... under the grounds of Competency according to your job description which can be fought if a list of services expected to be run / maintained was not produced for you before you agreed your job description.

 

Teachers can be inspected and awarded a grade by lots of people ... from their Line Manager, LA folk and OFSTED. That is before we even get on to Performance Management (which also has legal guidelines from the DfES for teachers but not for associate staff).

 

I am not saying that we should have our own OFSTED but when we think that teachers have to go through this and we don't ... and it just made me wonder ... we want to have pay comparable to teachers for the effort we put in, we also want to be on comparable salaries to jobs outside education ...

 

Outside education there are measurable targets, mianly to do with money, that we do not have, and in education there is a strict level of accountability for teachers (that neatly includes a competency framework) that we do not have either.

 

No wonder it is all in a mess ...

[limbo]

@Webman - because that is the prime directive of the school - you would not expect to be working in industry and not get involved in tailoring the systems to what the company needed. Like producing an e-commerce system, or tailoring the accounts system etc.

 

Network managers are accountable - but honestly, how many lessons during a week will a student realistically be sat down at a computer? And if electronic registers go down, paper can be used - not as easy or neat, but not end of the world stuff.

[webman]

True, they were just some examples. IT is a very integral part of a school and a huge responsibility for anybody running a school network. Just because the whole-school network isn't directly linked to T&L doesn't meen it isn't important.

[Geoff]

The problem is a lot of school teachers/SMTs don't 'get' that.

[limbo]

And there Geoff has hit the nail on the head - without being heavily involved in the T&L the work you do just is not going to get noticed and therefore rewarded.

[webman]

That's right. But it shouldn't be like that

[limbo]

I can honestly say that at this school it is not, but that is probably not what you all want to hear.

[GrumbleDook]

Not completely right ... you have to be able to show what impact you have on T&L. At that point you can show what happens if any services provided are missing or below the fantastic standard you provide.

 

Remember that this is the area that there is very little evidence and so it would be seriously welcome by lots of others.

[limbo]

Just wanted to agree with Grumbledook - mainly because it will give me my 100th post!

[russdev]

Agenda for tomorrow's atl conferance includes following motions: -

 

Support staff pay and conditions

36 COMPOSITE from resolutions submitted by Berkshire and Birmingham branches

 

THAT Conference acknowledges the invaluable contribution provided by teaching assistants. Conference further recognises the lack of national and professional structures for training, accreditation, career progression and pay and welcomes the very helpful recommendations of the WAMG sub-group for a national pay framework for school support staff. Conference therefore requests that the Executive Committee:

 

(i) uses all possible means to expedite the implementation of the WAMG recommendations;

 

(ii) lobbies the Government to guarantee sufficient funds to enable schools to ensure that pay rises for teaching assistants do not result in redundancies for either teaching or classroom support staff;

 

(iii) urges the appropriate bodies to remedy the lack of professional structure.

 

Proposer: Martyne Ellard, Berkshire branch; Seconder: David Ambler, The College High School, Birmingham

[webman]

All very well if you're a teaching assistant :x

[russdev]

What got to remember atl support staff members are 99% ta but important part is I & III

 

Russ