Now teaching assistant are the latest to be hit…

By Jim Sweetman / @jimbo9848

It was not a totally unexpected decision but the abolition of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) underlines how the coalition is driven. The SSSNB was a cheap and necessary organisation put in place to ratify a confusing picture of provision for school support staff. Created in November 2009 by the Apprenticeships, Skills Children and Learning Act, it was only formally established in January 2010 and still had lots of work to do.

It was necessary because, in 2002, the Labour government opened the door to support staff in schools. That was not a popular move at the time. Tony Blair’s idea of a Mums’ Army looked as if it might create more problems than it solved and could simply be a cheapskate mechanism for bringing down teacher pupil ratios.

In practice, it worked out differently and the policy was a huge success. There are now over 190,000 teaching assistants and 360,000 support staff in primary and secondary schools, working collaboratively with teachers to help children and no-one would argue that standards have suffered. Support staff members have turned out to provide unexpected benefits. They are flexible in terms of time so they can free up teachers for other tasks as required. They know their local areas and build a powerful connection between communities and schools. And, this employment opportunity provides a gateway to full-time employment for mothers at home which allows them to work in a public service environment with professionals.

The coalition doesn’t like this because it doesn’t fit with their values. They want to work teachers hard and make sure they are in classrooms, as if somehow they have been sneaking out of their responsibilities by using support staff. They want parents to run their own schools and either to be set against teachers or used as a device to lever standards from outside the school. They think a voluntary system of school helpers sits much more comfortably with the big society objectives. They don’t want to see an expansion of public sector work. When you are driven by this ideology, the SSSNB is clearly a waste of time.

Had it been allowed to continue the SSSNB would have done some good work. Finalising pay and conditions for support staff would not just have been fair but it would also have defined job roles, created a career structure which included incremental salaries and training opportunities. It would have replaced term time contracts without holiday pay with annual contracts and supported schools in taking their best support staff further on in their careers in the interests of the children in those schools.

This wasn’t just pie in the sky. Higher Level Teaching Assistants are now part of the fabric of teaching and learning in many schools and they do an excellent job supporting teaching in any number of ways. It is also worth remembering that they are excellent value in terms of the education budget as a whole. No-one could suggest that they have been over-rewarded in the past and there was no likelihood that that might happen in the future.

Now it is gone and there is a free-market. Schools can pay the national minimum wage, mess about with hours or contracts and make whatever demands they like. And, at a time of increasing unemployment, they will get away with it under the guise of making cuts. Academies and free schools can do what they like as well in terms of new contracts. It’s a real shame. Schools reflect society and transmit values to the next generation but the behaviour of the coalition and Michael Gove in this area shows their contempt for schools, society and values.