"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?

Government have told them to get jobs that pay more.

i'd give my right arm for a job like that, (and i have relevant qualifications) but nothing going around here >.<

I went for a trial shift for a TA last year, I was quite excited about it until I was told the pay was £65 per day before tax with unpaid breaks, no contract, no sick pay and no holiday pay. Plus it was term time only so I would be out of pocket each time the school closed for holidays. Can’t say I’m surprised you can’t find staff.

I was a mid day supervisor a few years ago

As was I.

They sacked us all along with TA's in the name of efficiency savings.

What goes round comes round.

@Smartsub change it to flexible working 2/3/4 days a week TTO and you'll have lots of candidates and be able to cover sick leave etc.

I'm not hiding behind the payscale. They are a fact. The jobs are assessed not to carry responsibility sufficient to justify a higher scale.

I recently and reluctantly left my reading intervention post at a secondary. I thought I’d hit the jackpot ‘getting in’ with the local school. The school friendly hours and pay was quite okay for what I thought would be 1:1 reading.

It wasn’t that though. Your comment about the level of responsibility is a misconception. It was immense for the rate of pay and worse, lack of training or support. There was no dedicated middays, so that was tacked onto the role. Then there was no one to clean the halls after said break duties, so that was soon tacked on to the role too (despite there being children waiting for me to read with).

I lost count of the amount of scraps or fights I had to get between. Several medical emergencies, where I have no first aid training. Children disclosing such sensitive and emotive issues almost on a daily basis that I have no support for. Students presenting with SEN issues that would go ignored, regardless of how hard you pushed for that pupil because no one has the time or simply, the will to deal with it.

This is all with the threat that you may be called on to cover lessons if needed and won’t be compensated for it, let alone trained. I’d never even been in a classroom before then. The main part of my role that I was qualified for soon became secondary. It just became untenable to continue and to top it all off, no one cared. You were support staff, the lowest ebb and boy did you know it. Morale is so, so low and it’s blatantly obvious why.

You couldn’t pay me for the level of stress it caused for what was meant to be that ‘gold dust’ job I could leave at the door. It’s naïve and unfair to think that may be the case. So I went back to a flexible work from home admin role, which is now what schools are competing with really.

Sorry WFH and more flexible jobs are new post covid. Also a very tight labour market is new post covid and brexit. You seem to be quite obtuse. The world has changed and schools have not.

Schools are changing, gradually more and more responsibility is being placed on support staff. Covid-related sickness has meant support staff have been teaching classes of children. The more support staff do, the more that is then expected of them.
Do a good job and then get given more responsibility. Not more pay though 🙄.
Women (and let's face it, it is mainly women in support staff roles) have had enough. They can get better paid work elsewhere for less stress.

I don't know any schools where TAs get no contract, sickpay or holiday pay.

Some holiday is unpaid, but they are paid holidays pro rated and get full sick pay for up to 6m and half pay for a further 6m (subject to time served), plus local government pension scheme . The pay is poor but the terms are good compared to other similarly paid jobs.

What's the salary for a TA these days?

Very hard to say without being rude, but as everyone's decided they hate me anyway 😆 our children predominantly come from chaotic families.

I was a pastoral lead for many years before i returned to the classroom. I'm on far more money now as a classroom teacher than I was then, but I had a lot more responsibilty and demands on my time in my previous role.

I couldn't maintain the level of flexibility required once I had children. My managers would have sworn blind that my job was 8-4, but it rarely was and if there has been a serious incident, there was no way I could leave the building until it was dealt with. Going back to teaching was the best move I made and I should have done it earlier. It was horror stories about workload from other teachers that put me off, and I just haven't found that to be the case.

Been there, done that... unless your partner is on a more than decent salary forget it.. its in effect, a part time job, paid too poorly for the amount of responsibility you have to take , and , in my case, an incredibly toxic working environment.

Op you’ve come and asked a question and argued with every point made. You don’t seem to have an open mind.
Ultimately it’s because the pay is crap.

It's not really "me" arguing. I'm presenting the arguments I'm given by the LA etc.

£12500 a year for 44 weeks and about 28 hours a week
Another reason the jobs are unattractive- post used to be 36 hours a week- so about £16k equivalent.

The pay is crap that's why.

Maybe the school has exploited too much, if you are not getting enough applicant?
To me, just a parent, the job of TA and admin staff at school are almost like volunteer work. They are paid less, with so much responsibility. Without the love for job and for school, it's unsustainable, imo. People who can work as TA or admin staff at school, has enough qualification to get the job somewhere else with better pay.

I think MATs are moving away from the LA pay scales. Certainly the MATs round me pay significantly more for some roles. Like 20% more for roles hard to fill.

Yes, this is part of the problem for us. We're in competition with other schools that aren't tied to the LA payscales

Academies can be absolutely ruthless to work for though

You are not tied to LA pay scales. You can pay what you want (you cant go lower but you can go higher)

I think this is it.

There's a lot more flexibility and wfh available now than there was in February 2020. People who want or need to work around school hours have more options than they did. Some of the people who'd have taken a job in a school before all this can now access better paid options they can do around the DC, without having to be tied to a physical workplace.

Then there's also the general labour shortage societally, which is affecting probably most sectors. Women are in the workforce in smaller numbers than pre-pandemic and obviously these jobs are disproportionately done by us.

On the headlines last night they reported that for the first time since they started collecting the data, there were more jobs than applicants. That would explain the change.