Unions representing school support staff are celebrating after education secretary Alan Johnson gave the green light for creating a national pay structure under a new negotiating body.
The long-awaited report by the Support Staff Working Group (SSWG) proposes that all non-teaching school staff, including teaching assistants and nursery nurses, be taken out of the National Joint Council negotiations between local authorities and unions, which determine pay and conditions for all other council employees. The unions hope it will end the wide disparities in pay for school staff, which have resulted from the process of harmonising conditions under the single status agreement.
GMB national secretary Brian Strutton said, 'For teaching assistants, secretaries and all the other non-teaching roles, this will bring consistency and fairness to match their growing role and importance in schools.'
Giving the go-ahead for the new pay structure, Mr Johnson said he looked forward to the working group, which has representatives from unions and employers, setting up a new negotiating body 'to look at how we can better align pay and conditions of employment for support staff throughout the country'.
Christina McAnea, national education secretary for Unison, which represents most support staff, said one of the SSWG's first tasks would be to seek a 'workable solution' to the anomaly in which some teaching assistants are on term-time only contracts while others are paid year-round.
She said once agreement has been considered by unions and employers, the working group will initiate 'a process of assimilation', transferring staff from their existing NJC contract to one under a new negotiating body.
Ms McAnea said that implementation of the single status agreement would continue to affect support staff, producing varying pay and conditions, but these variations would be ironed out in a national framework.
Philip Parkin, general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers, said, 'We look forward to the group's recommendations and to contributing to this ongoing work.'
Gina Smith, a Sunderland nursery nurse who recently put a petition for a national agreement on the Downing Street website, said she hoped that this would mean an end to support staff pay being determined at 'the whim of employers'.