Schools as a business ...

[MN164]

I have a gut bad feeling about schools making a profit - groups like Cognita and Alpha Plus (50 schools in the UK between them).

I was trawling around the lists of options and noticed one that is owned by a private investor group and crossed it off my list (list includes all flavours, state, co-ed, faith, private, grammar etc).

Is that wrong and narrow minded?

[rabbitstew]

Is it continuous employment if you have a zero hours contract with an employer and continuously work zero hours for them for several weeks?

[rabbitstew]

Just looked up info from ACAS on zero hours contracts. Doesn't look to me like continuous employment rights and zero hours contracts are very often bedfellows... Is that a blue moon I see?

I can see when zero hours contracts could work for all parties, though - when you only need or want casual work, rather than needing a proper income to live on; or when your work is spectacularly well paid and/or you are getting lots of it and like the freedom to say no. I suspect a lot of the time, though, zero hours contracts are most useful for employers of low paid, low skilled people.

[rabbitstew]

Are there statistics on the sorts of employers and fields of employment that use zero hours contracts?

[straggle]

How can you claim tax credits on a zero hours contract when you're meant to work a minimum 16 hours a week and how often are you meant to apply for them? Are zero hours contracts the reason why there is so much error and overpayment in tax credits (not even counting fraud), something like £10 billion per year? That would explain a lot.

[prh47bridge]

rabbitstew - People on zero hours contracts are most likely to be found in Accommodation & Food Services or Health & Social Work. Those two sectors between them account for nearly half of all workers on zero hours contracts.

You may be interested to know that on average people on zero hours contracts work 22 hours per week. That compares with an average of 32 hours for the workforce as a whole. People on zero hours contracts make up around 2% of people in employment.

Regarding continuous employment, it depends very much on the contract and the way the employer and employee work together. If the contract gives a continuing relationship regardless of whether or not the employee is actually working that is definitely continuous employment. Some employers use such contracts because it is easier for them to administer such matters as holiday pay and any benefits to which the employee is entitled (even on a zero hours contract the employee is entitled to the same benefits as other staff doing the same job). Even if the contract doesn't create a continuing relationship, if there is a well-founded expectation that there will be further engagements between the employer and the employee that can be sufficient to create a period of continuous employment.

straggle - You cannot qualify for all of the benefits I listed simultaneously. If you are not working enough hours to qualify for Working Tax Credits you will still qualify for Child Tax Credits and probably out of work benefits such as Income-based JSA. If your hours fluctuate the average working hours over the 5 weeks before you made your benefit claim are used. Since on average workers on zero hours contracts work 22 hours per week a lot of them will be entitled to WTC.

You are a long way out on tax credit overpayments. They run at about £1.6bn per annum. Underpayments run at about £1bn per annum. The vast majority of both under- and overpayments are due to families reporting changes in circumstances either after the year end or so close to the year end that there was insufficient time to adjust the payments.

[prh47bridge]

You may be interested to know that around 35% of people on zero hours contracts report that they actually work full time. I haven't seen any analysis of this but I suspect this is things like, say, a restaurant that has all the waiting staff on zero hours contracts so that they can adjust staffing levels to match bookings, cover illness, etc., but has within that a core staff that they use all the time.

[rabbitstew]

prh47bridge - that is interesting. When you say that on average people on zero hours contracts work 22 hours per week, do you mean per zero hours contract that they are on, or in total (if they have such an arrangement with more than one employer)? And how common is it to be on more than one zero hours contract at a time?

Also, what is meant by "on average" when quoting official statistics? Unfortunately, I did mechanics and probability at A-level, not statistics, and have ever since felt at a disadvantage when trying to interpret summaries of statistical data, as an "average" to my rather basic understanding can be worked out in various different ways and I have no idea how it is done in the official statistics, or how great the differences would be if calculated in different ways.

[PastSellByDate]

MN164

Stepping aside for the moment from the thorny issue of 'for profit' education vs. not-for-profit

could I just put a plea in for your DC on this list.

Perhaps you should have your DC make a list of senior schools they'd like to go to and why - because I suspect your DC will have issues/ concerns themselves:

are their friends going there too?
can I continue with my music teacher there?
can I join clubs?
Is there afterschool provision - homework clubs/ sports/ drama/ etc....
ability of the school to meet your child's needs (e.g. SEN/ G&T/ etc...)

I get that you have particularly strong feelings against private for profit provision of education - but I do think you may have to temper that with your child's needs/ desires at this stage in their life.

After all they'll be going there day after day for at least the next 5 years. 7 if they stay for A-level.

HTH

[MN164]

PastSellByDate

You are right. However, because we live in London, we are overwhelmed with choices of all "flavours" - comp, grammar, faith, private, co-ed, single sex, etc. Taking a reasonable commuting distance (I draw the line at 1 hour, but it would have to be pretty special to be more than 30 mins away) we have over 50 "options". The smallest number being stat comps we need to be in catchment for. The grammars, for the most part, don't have a "catchment limit". Faith schools have huge diocese to draw from. The largest group is, of course, private schools.

Of the 50+ options there are about 5, that I know of, that are "for profit". That still leaves plenty of "choice".

[prh47bridge]

rabbitstew - The 22 hours is the total spread across however many employers the individual has. I don't know of any statistics that cover how common it is for people to have multiple zero hours contracts. For "average hours" the ONS has used the arithmetical mean. They haven't published median or mode figures.

[rabbitstew]

Thanks, prh47bridge.

[straggle]

Universal networks - 'it does not mean that they don't get private companies to do much of their work for them but that is not the same as the assets and infrastructure being owned by non-profit-making companies.'