"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?

@Smartsub
My take on the shortage:

1. Cost of living increase over the last 20 years hasn't kept up with house prices. I'm 30, only half of my friends own property and I and the only one to own a house. All our parents have mega mansions, nice council houses and have either retired or work for leisure. My people are better off having free time during the day and claiming benefits then working for minimum wage. Most of us don't have kids so don't care about school hours.
2. Petrol cost increase vs hours , if petrol goes up than your ratio of earned salary over 5 hours to petrol is lower.
3. School staff are dropping rapidly and it falls to a lot of these tas and support to pick up the slack.
4. Although it's term time you don't get paid holidays. I might only get 4 weeks but I get them paid, and parental leave is unpaid but it's only 4 unpaid weeks a year vs 13 in a ta role.
5. The Internet and the pressure on schools to achieve ofsted gives parents really high expectations compared to 50 years ago. Everything is online so it's much more free to critique a school.
6. Covid has massively increased working from home jobs everywhere. I can work 5 days a week in a school, term time, or in an office 2 days a week 3 days from home. Most jobs even private sector let you take the school run off or have a quick Dr's appointment in the morning. I'm still better off being in an office, and my dream was being a teacher 10 years ago.

The only reason I'd be a ta is to "give back to the community " but I'm I'm paying the bills in an office, unlike the boomers I don't have the luxury of having a fun day job that you do for charity.

1. Bigger class sizes than ever before , and dare I say it , more challenging needs in pupils with more poverty, more English as a second language , more diagnosed sen. This might not go down well but imo it's important.

Ways to mitigate this, from schools I've seen with good advertising

1. You can't change the pay so up the benefits. If you have an on site pool and gym, advertise it free for staff and family members . Free hot lunch. Or free drinks in the canteen.
2. Preserve the pension as much as you can.
3. Private health insurance at good premiums.
4. A free masters degree for someone who desperately needs it .
5. Hire sixth formers from local schools for extra cash.
6. If you are private, free school admission for kids of parents. If you are state, top of the list after lac and echp kids.
7. Get a nursery attached to increase numbers at school and attract a different kind of workforce.
8. Offer breakfast or after school club, and bolt on some hours with those for staff who want them.

@PrancerandDancer

I have led the first aid provision for a large secondary and the responsibility was massive. I was responsible for overseeing students with severe nut allergies, asthma, epilepsy and other lesser known but still significant health issues.

That is before you’ve dealt with the lunchtime altercation where little Johnny ends up with a black eye … again! (Because the school doesn’t follow their bullying policies) and because it’s a “first aid” incident I was the one who had to break the news to the parent (before the matter was then sent to head of department).

Young ladies coming to me for sanitary towels and then disclosing huge safeguarding concerns because as a support staff member with your own office you have the time and privacy to speak to students as opposed to teachers who are always so busy.

I could go on and on and on. All of the above for little more than 1000 pounds a month after tax. Having said that I did enjoy many aspects of the role and if the pay reflected the responsibility I would still be there.

School Sec here - AWFUL pay (just 50p above min wage) for a very stretched role needing all sorts of skills. Unpaid lunch break but too busy to take it. Natural staff wastage without hours replaced has stretched us to the max where I work. After half term, I'm facing the usual busy day job plus formatting school reports, loads of school trips and sorting residentials.
Until recently, we had just SSP for all support staff including TA's. Now we get 1 week per annum full sick pay (woop de do.)
Our teachers receive (and take!) virtually unlimited time off on full pay whenever they need to, so there's real disparity.
I'm really tempted to leave but I suppose I like working term time only. One day it will get too much and I'll just walk out and leave them in the mire.

theres a shortage of workers and wfh jobs mean there are more flexible jobs. They aren’t terrible jobs though and given the school hours and good terms some people will want them.

I accepted a school admin job just before the energy increases etc. The salary is low and I'm worse off. Its also not an easy job, I'm in a high school and it's bloody hard work, literally non stop all day. So although we get all school hols off for the money I wish I'd looked elsewhere.

I’m a midday Supervisor and I certainly have a large amount of responsibilities and accountability!

My first item of accountability is FGM. That is on me if I hear about any FGM I legally have to ring the police myself, my Head can be with me but can’t make that call or do the inevitable interview. If I do not report this I would be in legal trouble!

P.R.E.V.E.N.T. Is another responsibility that holds accountability. If I hear or witness anything that falls under P.R.E.V.E.N.T and I don’t report it appropriately I very much could be held accountable if something were to happen as a result of not reporting.

Safeguarding, as a Midday supervisor we’re in a unique position. We are often more aware of physical injuries both old and new then teachers and TAs. At lunch we are the first port of call for injuries. We often see areas not easily seen (chests, backs, thighs, upper arms for instance we have protocols in place when having to check an area usually covered by clothing) and as such we have to make the initial report that can be used in court. If this is not reported accurately and to the right person I could certainly be held accountable, perhaps not by the law but definitely by the Head and LA and I would most certainly lose my job. Did you know if I witnessed a Safeguarding concern of a child in my school out of school hours/holidays I have a responsibility to report it to the LA?!

Then there are many more things I am responsible for as a Midday Supervisor which may not end in a criminal record but definitely could lose my job if I were negligent. For example allowing a child to play in a dangerous way, turning a blind eye to bullying behaviour, turning a blind eye to other staff behaving in an unacceptable way ect….

These aren’t all my responsibilities, just some of the more major ones. 🫣

I get £9.60 an hour.

There’s a TA job going, 30 hours a week and approx £12,500 pa that doesn’t seem a lot especially when you look at what they want from you.

I am a teacher. I work as a ta . The pay is beyond shit. . I would earn more working in Aldi and. This week I have had to be the misery manager because I am a teacher and no one else can do it legally. So you think my school have paid me any more money for this? No- they haven’t . It’s a lot of work and responsibility for really shit wages.

@Smartsub also think about where you are advertising them. I'm a school governor and frequently have to point out to our Headteacher that putting support roles on the school website and eTeach will not attract a wide pool of applicants. They need to be advertised to parents in the school newsletter, broadcast on social media and added to a generic job portal like Indeed.

Maybe people are opting for WFH jobs now, there is so many about and the pay is more.

I work in a school support role. Love my job but it is severely underpaid for the amount of work the team is expected to take on and in this current financial climate many cannot work for so little. I worry that soon I will need to start seeing what's out there as my wages are no longer covering outgoings

"What's changed?"

Errr people's attitudes. People are sick to death of working for poor wages. Why should we? School jobs are more and more demanding and the responsibility has increased yet, the pay hasn't.

I have been a TA for 8 years. I love it. But the pay is atrocious. It's become insultingly bad recently. When I started it was significantly above minimum wage, but minimum wage has increased significantly, whereas my wages have barely gone up, so am pennies above minimum wage now. This is not OK. I have a masters and the wage may be the thing to throw me out of a field I love and am very good at.

well when people can earn more shelf stacking at Aldi I don’t blame them for not applying for stressful, shitty paid school jobs.

The TAs and other support staff in our school are older ladies with husbands who work and who have quite traditional household roles and therefore work for 'pin money'. People under 50 in this position are few and far between - most of the women round here (lower middle class area) need to bring in a living wage. (I'm worried I sound like I think this is a bad thing, I don't, but I do think society has changed)

Laura McInerney had a thread on this issue a couple of days ago: twitter.com/miss_mcinerney/status/1526244491883167745?s=20&t=M6XMIkyrDmELclPo5T5SZQ.

Her theory was that, post-pandemic, women have more access to flexible working which fits around children and therefore have less need of poorly-paid term-time school support roles.

Excellent point and same here. When I started, the salary was several ££ above min wage. However, no pay rise in 10yrs vs annual min wage increase has completely eroded that.

Try offering better pay? People are wisely being drawn to jobs that pay the same for less responsibility

TA hours have been cut - so they are now very part-time
That stops many people applying.

Just wait until you want a Headteacher! If you think getting a TA is hard then getting a head is nearly impossible.

There are more job vacancies than previously, it is hard to recruit for loads of job types. Perhaps other employers are now being more flexible and offering school hours but at higher pay.

I've known a number of very highly qualified TAs (with degrees, ex lawyers, etc etc ) and have honestly thought they were for the most part a bit bonkers and that the schools were playing them for mugs.

It’s to do with gender.

These roles are traditionally viewed as women’s work (has there ever been a male dinner lady?). However there are fewer women available for the roles. Why?

• pandemic = more home working roles available for women


• pandemic = more men of working age dropping out of the workforce by choice (nobody quite knows why), leaving more options for women seeking work


• pandemic = hit earnings of lots of male primary breadwinners, meaning their female partners moved from part time roles to full time.


• pandemic = new roles created are in sectors which have traditionally recruited a lot of women, esp elsewhere in the public sector


• pandemic = more older women (over 50) dropping out of the workforce. -again noone is sure why this is as Long Covid seems to affect more younger workers.

This could be relatively easily solved if more men were willing to consider roles that have traditionally been seen as for women.

Also most parents cotton on that the primary years are actually quite short if you have one or two kids - torpedoing your career for a few short years of a job that fits around childcare isn’t worth it.

If you think something has changed, and actually want to know what, then I’ll go back to what I said on pg 2.

The age demographic has changed.

The people in TA jobs before Covid were largely older, approaching retirement, the first generation of TAs really. They could afford to stay in low-paid jobs because they were the generation that could afford housing before they had kids, or on one main income. During Covid, the health risk made the job unattractive on top of the changes in responsibility, and those that could afford to go did so - many, of that age group, with mortgages long since paid off.

Now you need us younger gen Xs and millennials to take over, but we don’t have their financial security, cannot afford to work for little and do voluntary extras, and are less willing to “do it for the children” after having been screwed over ourselves.

Children who have never heard the word no at home, are rude, entitled and, often, frankly feral. Who wants to work as a dinner lady in a job that cuts your day in half, pays hardly anything and requires you to deal with that. A friend works in a perfectly ordinary school where the dinner ladies won't go out at lunchtime without a nominated teacher on the playground because the behaviour of the children is so appalling.
TAs being expected to deal with children who have mental health issues. One of our TAs was cut on her arm with a pair of scissors when she turned away to look at another child.He positioned the scissors very carefully in the 'bingo wing ' area and cut with the absolute intention of hurting her severely.Another TA had to deal with a child who is probably a psychopath. "I will poke out your eyes while you sleep". Child was 5. No emotion , dead behind the eyes. When I started teaching in 1988 those children would not have been in the mainstream classroom. Watering and dead heading in B and Q garden centre is far more appealing.