"Gold dust" school jobs

[Smartsub]

I am currently trying to recruit for support staff in school. I need kitchen, staff, admin and TAs. All term time only and all school hours. The jobs I've previously seen referred to on here as "gold dust".

We are getting hardly any applications and those we do get a poor. Admittedly the money is poor, but that's always been the case. Until a couple of years ago the difficult part was sifting through the 100s of applications we'd get for such jobs, now we rarely get more than a handful.

What's changed?

“The ones we do get are poor”

it’s minimum wage, train them.

you are unlikely to get experienced and qualified staff these days for crap money. Any enthusiastic applicant with any sort of provable work history can be trained.

As mentioned there’s not enough high needs funding so I have colleagues that are 1:1 but are assigned 2 children. How can she support both in maths and English? They have totally different abilities.
I’m a HLTA but am thinking of leaving. I cover PPA and it’s hard work for the money and I’d luuurrrve to be able to take a day off when I want to now my DC are adults.

@Coldenough4snow we're a specialist school, parents are not really an option for us, but yes we offer all staff a free lunch and very good it is too. (For as long as we have a cook!).

One of our teachers has just qualified after joining us as a cook about 8 years ago and been supported all the way and my finance assistant has just finished a degree apprenticeship, so in some ways we are victims of our own success there, we support our junior staff to progress!

No TA has ever covered a lesson for £1 an hour here.

A relative recently left their job as office admin in a primary. Paid for 3 days but doing the work of 5. When they left they had to train the new recruit (not inexperienced), who was shocked at how much was expected from this part-time role, so who knows how long they'll stick it out for. It's a shame - I know schools have got ten places to put each penny, but unfortunately people can no longer justify low pay for school hours.

I used to work in schools specifically pastoral roles. I don’t anymore because:

• The pay is poor
• I now have a job which involves working from home and out of the home, so better for flexibility as term time only jobs are very inflexible.
• It’s hard work and I got sick of teachers and senior staff talking to support staff like crap
• not much career progression

I don't think the salaries for these jobs are bad at all - but they are not full time (school hours, term time only) hence why the net pay is so low.

I love training them. I've used the apprenticeship scheme to train everyone from site staff, TAs and admin staff, but they still need a bit of quality behind them. Basic maths and English, for example.

Have you seen how much crap they get as school staff on MN? Parents shouting complaining without reason at TA/Admin Staff? You need to pay more.
You pay crap, you get poor candidates.

Lots of great responses to this and i agree with the general thrust - poorly paid, lots of responsibility, no flexibility. You get paid more in Tesco and you get a discount on your groceries. They're not "gold dust" jobs any more with the increase in WFH/flexible hours/employers struggling to recruit so everyone is offering more money except local authorities.

If you can't pay them any more, are there other things you can offer instead to make it more attractive?

Interesting you think TAs have no responsibility. In my last class, the teacher basically threw a group of lower ability learners at me and expect me to plan and prepare phonics work for them. Tbh, it was better for them as she was clueless. Even in my current class, I have to prepare things for an intervention group and have to do
that in my own free time. Lots of TAs are asked to do things outside their job description by teachers and SLT. It gets tiring when you have very little prospect of a rise in your salary no matter how hard you work.

@Smartsub

I never got a free lunch despite doing lunch duties daily and was regularly asked to cover health and social care lessons (as a support staff member). I have worked all over to be honest but find the working culture in schools shocking.

We are down to one lsa in our secondary school of 750. Our last one left to go and work in a local shop, because the pay was better.we have a rolling advert on our school fb page for lsa, kitchen staff and cleaners. It used to be attractive when it wasn’t term time only pay.
conversely in my sil’s city primary there were over a hundred applicants for two ta jobs.

That's not the way TAs are used here. We are very very clear about that

I can sum up the reasons behind your difficulties recruiting in 3 points: poor covid mitigations, poor pay, high fuel prices. It's not worth it on so many levels.

@Overtheanvil Ah - thought this would not be relevant to most, but my relative & the other member of office staff were also treated poorly by teaching staff (cold shoulder/talking down/cliques). As it was 3 days (2.5, really) she put up with it, but disproportionate workload was the ultimate killer.

I don't think there's a lot of responsibility, the responsibility sits elsewhere

To be fair if that's the impression you're giving in the applications then it may be causing issues too.

TA/LSA roles are very low paid for the level of responsibility in most schools. Even the level 1 TAs these days have a lot of work to do, and are often arriving before their start time and leaving after, have to do all staff meetings, take groups, plan and prepare for interventions etc. and once you're at Level 3 they are often covering classes for short periods, leading and specialising in interventions, dealing with parents, etc. HLTAs are doing even more.

Lunchtime staff are expected to fully engage with all safeguarding training and issues, lead play sessions on the playground, deal with first aid, etc.

Admin roles are often high profile when it comes to dealing with parents, plus often needing to work to short notice deadlines, with limited resources, etc.

And these jobs simply do not pay enough for someone to actual support themselves independently. In almost all cases at my school the staff member is the second income earner in their household, and couldn't do it if they were the sole or main income earner.

Not ever seen so many school support jobs. We can’t recruit in my area either.
Schools will come to a standstill without these people.

I’m great at my job, I’m not a TA but I am support staff in a very hectic role, I have a lot of responsibility (none of it perceived 😱🤦🏼‍♀️) I do actually feel appreciated but some of the parents and the abuse you can receive from them often make me think that as soon as my last child has finished primary I’m out of schools all together

I think you're missing the point about 'responsibility'. Sure the head or department supervisor has a ultimately responsible for the safeguarding of the children, but the implementation is down to the individuals working directly with the kids. You can't say 'you're not responsible', then expect them to comply with the rules and procedures around safeguarding and supervision of actual children, administer first aid and deal with conflicts. Any interaction with children under one's care is a lot of responsibility.

There are lots of positives to my role in a school office in case it helps recruiting. I think its very varied compared to previous office work, i think I have more autonomy than in previous roles and its very active compared to some desk jobs. Its also busy so the day goes quicklym

To be clear, it's not me saying they're not responsible, it's the way the roles are evaluated under the NJC

We have the same problem and need numerous roles filled. Used to get stacks of applicants, now they're few and far between and not qualified for the roles.

I think a lot of it stems from the treatment of teachers and TAs from the start of the pandemic. We were already blamed for so much ... and then it got worse. Not only did we have to hear that we were merely babysitters, everyone was furious at us for wanting to safe safe and healthy as well even though we stayed open for so many children (covid knowledge was very different then and pre-vaccines). I know soooo many TAs in particular that left and said never again after that.

A lot of entry level NHS roles require a degree of weekend working (that didn't used to be the case). From my experience of NHS rotas if I were on a 1 in 6 Saturday rota it would be guaranteed to clash with the 1 in 4 weekends my husband works every time I was working (generally requesting a weekend "off" puts you first on the list to work it).

In general school hours jobs are appealing to those who are local to the school - as the logistics of leaving to pick up from a different school are more complicated. Also lack of flexibility to take time off in term time for sick children (so many bugs last year) might put people off. Added WFH flexibility in other fields negates the appeal of a short hours but inflexible job.

A teaching assistant doesn't have a lot of responsibility, not if used correctly. They assist the teacher, the responsibility Iies there.

A teaching assistant supports learning in the classroom these days, in almost every school I know. They aren't the old style 'teacher's assistant' doing a bit of wall displays, gluing in worksheets and washing paint pots in my experience.

That's why many schools now use the term 'learning support assistant' rather than TA.

Your school may be using the older style format but many people will be used to knowing about how most schools use these staff - and the level of responsibility, if not accountability, is massive compared to a few years ago.

I did this type of role previously and loved it. However, when I wanted to drop a day after mat leave I wasn't able to so moved to somewhere where i work less days for more pay.

The pay for support staff in school is shocking. I know of a brilliant TA who left my DD school lately because she could not afford to work that role anymore.

There was a huge amount of responsibility ( I was in charge of first aid and medical concern in a school of 1500) without the pay to reflect this. Such a shame as dedicated staff are leaving as they can no longer afford to do and moving to better paid jobs that they do not enjoy as much.