Non-Teaching Staff in Independent School

[BreadGoddess81]

My job is within a non-teaching department in a private school working in Admissions, Marketing and Development. (One of those posh school I'm always told!)

Consistently I have been in situations where non-teaching staff are treated as the complete bottom rung of the ladder and all lumped in as 'Support Staff' below Teachers.

The School Bursar/Business Director and the Head have on numerous occasions shown that they also feel this way about the non-teaching staff, despite the previous Head dealing with 'the divide' very well and quelled it to a point it was nearly gone.

With the new head, who has been in post for about 3 years now, the divide has come back.

The divide shows itself in simple ways such as school activities with some sort of staff benefit, such as an event with freebies or a novelty, only being offered to Support staff as an afterthought and made very obvious that we weren't considered in the original planning.

More professional problems are when information is only given in 'academic' meetings or briefings and support staff are not informed of things that still affect us and we require to be able to carry out certain elements of our jobs.

Am I right in seeing this as basically disadvantaging half (statistically just under) of the workforce by not offering the same opportunities, benefits or respect as other staff?

I'll sound a little dramatic but does it potentially edge into the Equal Opportunities Act? (Not the Equality Act as I know there are no protected characteristics involved)

Or am I being completely up myself and Support Staff (who I've always understood as 'Supporting the Business' rather than 'Supporting Teachers') do rank as completely below teaching staff.

My argument would be that I have the same level qualifications in my field as teachers do in theirs, and even if i didn't, when working in 'regular' workplaces, different qualifications haven't really been an issue.

Long message. Sorry, I know.

[BreadGoddess81]

Sorry. Ignore bit about Equality/Equal Opportunities Act. A simple google I was too lazy to do has shown me they are the same thing!

[user073795]

TA here, I don't think there's a massive divide as I think most support staff are very respected in my school but do get frustrated when you get called to a meeting for "all staff" to turn up and spend 45minutes listening to the correct way to mark books (which non of us do!). It sometimes feels like the SLT forgets that not all staff are teaching staff.