It’s time to champion school support staff and boost their rights

Support staff are the rarely-heralded workforce that keeps schools going.

Parents know the valuable role our support staff play – teaching assistants, caterers, attendance advisers, technicians – all those who keep schools running.

Yet these crucial members of staff have been undervalued and denied professional respect for far too long. Everyone with an interest in the success of pupils and schools should take the issue seriously.

Support staff are central to most schools’ models of SEND support, to attendance and behaviour management.

But many schools struggle to recruit the staff they need on existing pay and terms and conditions. At one point during the pandemic, teaching assistants were the second-highest shortage occupation, after HGV drivers.

Shamefully, support staff employment was officially reclassified as a “low-paying” sector by the Low Pay Commission in 2023.

‘Time to resolve contractual issues’

Important contractual issues, such as the proper calculation of holiday entitlement for term-time-only staff, have never been resolved.

Some rates are determined by obscure regional formulas of unclear origin, which can be hard for even the initiated to understand.

We would rightly not tolerate this situation for a moment for teachers. Why should we for support staff?

It is little wonder, then, that early last year just 6 per cent of support staff told UNISON that they felt valued by government, and only 11 per cent felt valued by their employer.

Nine out of ten support staff workers’ job descriptions do not match their actual duties, according to a GMB survey. They need a new deal at work.

The last Labour government created a vehicle to bring together unions and employers to get in a room and resolve these problems.

By 2010, unions and employers on the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) had agreed a draft national terms and conditions handbook, a bespoke job evaluation scheme, and a hundred consolidated role profiles.

Work was underway to produce a core contract of employment and a proper definition of the working year.

But all that progress was undone later in the year when Michael Gove scrapped the SSSNB, saying it did “not fit well with the government’s priorities [for the school workforce]”.

The result was fourteen years of drift and delay, and material hardship for support staff workers.

‘We can’t ignore the majority of school workers’

Each time Conservative ministers talked enthusiastically about teachers’ pay and conditions, they ignored the majority of the people who work in schools.

The professional marginalisation of support staff during those years betrayed a lack of knowledge and interest in the predominantly low-paid women who keep our schools running.

That was a culture I was determined to end when I became secretary of state.

The support staff unions were excluded from the old programme of talks. Now, those voices are fully represented alongside those of teachers, leaders and employers through the Improving Education Together (IET) agreement.

I was proud to work closely with the recognised support staff unions in opposition to lay the groundwork for reinstating the SSSNB. With Labour colleagues, I brought forward legislation within a hundred days of the election.

Under the SSSNB, school employers’ representatives and support staff unions will consider matters referred to them by the secretary of state.

The employment rights bill contains powers to implement the agreements through regulations. The SSSNB’s agreements will apply to support staff in all state-funded schools, including academies.

I’ve been clear in parliament that the matters to be referred include the drawing up of anational terms and conditions handbook, training, career progression routes and fair pay rates.

And let’s put the speculation firmly to rest. No ifs, no buts: as deputy leader I would ensure there will be no watering down and that the employment rights agenda will be implemented in full.

England’s 800,000 school support staff workers are the hidden professionals of the education system, including the 1,600 in my own Houghton and Sunderland South constituency.

It’s time that they got the fair pay and the professional respect they deserve.