Teaching assistants quitting schools for supermarkets because of 'joke wages'

[noblegiraffe]

Finally getting some mainstream press attention:

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/09/teaching-assistants-quitting-schools-for-supermarkets-because-of-joke-wages

The article is very clear that schools cannot afford to pay higher wages for support staff. The DfE comment at the bottom says it is up to schools to improve support staff pay.

The education sector is falling apart. Teacher redundancies mean bigger class sizes. Fewer teaching assistants means zero in-class support unless your child has an EHCP. Recruitment issues mean that even if your child has an EHCP, they might not be able to hire anyone to support them.

The way provision for the most vulnerable students has been eroded over the last decade of school underfunding is devastating.

Yeah, the proof is in the pudding really. Certainly having the holidays off is a perk, but it's evidently not enough by itself or it wouldn't be so hard to recruit.

Are you having a fucking laugh, deliberately being a twat or just bloody oblivious?
There is less time in education than there is money FFS!
I barely have time to eat my lunch never mind organise a bloody pop up volunteer drive.

All my local secondary schools have TAs employed as "classroom cover supervisors".

Grade C pay too. It use to be grade D until they increased responsibility for the same wage. And this is the biggest issue.

Not just that wages are low but that you are expected to do more for the wage they pay than you use to.

That is very much a good point.
The whole thing is a a shit show. People need paying properly in a job where vulnerable people are being cared for. It's a qualified job.

@justasking111 exactly. Your son's school gets more money but people still leave. There are kids in my DDs school who are going through appeals in tribunals to get a space in a special school. There's no spaces. They have roughly 18 kids in each 210 year group with EHCPs. That's not counting the ones who should have an ehcp but don't have one, or the ones that just won't ever get one but still need support. Most of the ehcp kids should be in a special school. Imagine the wild west that is created with no TA in a class. Given your son works in a special school with much much lower adult to kids ratios and still struggles with staff retention, and really tough working conditions, I'm sure you can imagine the chaos that would ensue if the school just decided to get ad-hoc volunteers.
Add to that, most of these kids need continuity. New faces often stress them out and a lot are embarrassed to ask for help until they build up trust with the TA. A volunteer would frankly be useless.

I seem to recall the government has already suggested this.

As always I’m appalled at this government’s treatment of our children. Even if you were to just look at it in an economic sense it’s very short sighted. How are we to compete in a global jobs market with adults who haven’t been through a properly funded education system.

I am laughing (slightly hysterically) at the idiotic suggestion of volunteers replacing the 275000 TAs working in schools across the country. Our local village can’t get volunteers to run the Brownie pack full of well-behaved eager to please girls for 1 evening a week. I suspect the local primary would struggle to find someone willing to get bitten and spat at by a distressed 10 year old for free Monday to Friday. I am also wondering where this enormous bank of people fit enough to work with young children, but wealthy enough to not need earn a living is coming from. My experience of volunteers in primary settings were that although well-meaning, they were often a liability and they were frequently unreliable- I gave up planning on the assumption that parent-helpers would be there as they would often tell me at 9.10am that something had suddenly come up and they couldn’t help after all.

Schools can’t get people to volunteer to be governors either.

They also struggle to get admin, cleaner, catering and caretaker roles filled. Wonder how many volunteers they can get to fill these roles too

My school does get volunteers, but in really specific capacity.

We have volunteer readers and we had biggest success with this by giving them a training session and then allocating one struggling reader to them, who they see frequently for a short time. No one wanted to come all morning, but workers were happy to hear a reader then go to work.

Sure, but the idea that there isn't an appetite to pay more taxes to get better funded public services is generally spread by a party who want to cut taxes.

Well people could stop voting for them...

Single a FT job at NMW is approx equivalent to £18.2 before tax etc. (based on 37 hours a week on 52 weeks)

A TA on the lowest pay will take home £18.8 k FTE. Approx £9.97/ hr

Take home based on 30 hours a week, 40 was and holiday pay is £13.1k.

So yes you work more hours at a supermarket for pretty much the same. However the job expectations are varsly different for those wages.

For a start the skill set to be a 1:1 TA for a child with special needs and the risks involved are much greater.

And most supermarkets pay £9.50-£10.50 per hr for basic job so you could earn more which makes it worthwhile working longer hours.

This in a nutshell.
If the comments are right that Teacher Assistant is a NMW job then what do people expect?

NMW should be reserved for the most basic of jobs with no training or qualifications.

Any one with a college certificate (HNC/HND) should not be on NMW. Their renumeration should reflect the qualification and skills they have.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. They can't recruit and retain the high calibre staff because of the wages.

My DD is 6 - her class has have a TA who is fabulous better than the teacher IMHO

@itsgettingweird my mum used to be a very experienced TA. She is in her late 50s and now works 3 days a week in Waitrose. She loves her job, isn't stressed out and any hours she does over her contract she actually gets paid for. Not to mention she's made nice friends and is no longer effected by the crappy way a lot of SLT treat support staff.

They don't get 12 weeks holiday in their current role either. Do you understand how a term time contract works?

My DD stopped being a TA and went to work in Costa, better wages.

Vulnerable children, especially those needing 1-1 support, require consistency. It takes time to build relationships to the point where they can be advantageous to these pupils. It does them more harm than good to have different people slotting them in when they have time or deciding not to come anymore because they aren't enjoying it as much as expected.

Yeah I’m Ireland we don’t have TA’s, teachers run the class themselves. What we do have are SNA’s who are specifically assigned to a child with needs!! They are not there for the whole class. They do not cover breaks, they do not take whole classes EVER! they do not even count in the adult to child ratio on trips etc as they are there for 1 child only!! They do not plan for the child, they very very rarely laminate or do anything that the teacher should be doing for the class etc. and they are paid at least 25k and their pay scale reaches 43k.

The TA's in the school I work in are all highly experienced and trained. The level of expertise needed is not at all matched to the income we earn. I for one am a qualified teacher, but even those that aren't have received lots of training, and some have over 20 years experience. It's quite insulting to hear people think that just any volunteer could replace us.

Who does intervention work with other children who don’t need a full/time 1:1 @Cuddlywuddlies

I'm struggling to know what to do if I leave my education position.

I'm pastoral care so £28k FTE.

I take home £21k for 32 hrs a week 44.6 weeks of the year.

I then do extra work (respite) during holidays and I'm qualified to do something else I may start doing during holidays too.

There are a few of us that do our role as we have outreach too.

Our county is offering £35k for teachers to do the same role at schools across the county.

I stick at it because the hours suit (my ds is disabled).

An ECT wage is less than mine. That's another reason they can't get teachers I think. Because experienced TAs who have stuck at it can earn more FTE.

@purfectpuss yup, my mum has a chemistry degree and was a TA of some capacity for 20 odd years. Left last year for Waitrose.

Some of these children will never be suitable for the job market. They eventually leave school and are stuck at home. Parents then have to fight for assisted living places which are scarce and underfunded. Successive governments have turned a blind eye to the long term care of young adults

I'm a TA in a SEN school. Every day I get hit, bitten, my clothes pulled, I do toilet trips including girls on their periods, I occasionally have to restrain fully grown teenagers and this is on top of actually supporting their education. I have TA qualifications and a Degree in education. I get less that 18k for full time. I do my job because I love it although not sure how much longer I can manage financially. If we didn't do our job who would?

Current polls suggest that's exactly what would happen if there were a general election tomorrow, a Tory wipe-out.

Unfortunately we are not due another GE for a couple of years (barring divine intervention), so the next best thing people can do is email their Tory MP (they are still in a majority) and say ' Planning for growth involves serious investment in education, I am very keen to hear in particularly how funding will be increased to schools. Please pass this to Kit Malthouse, Secretary of State for Education, I will welcome his prompt reply'.