Does anyone know how LA job evaluations work?

[Dryandirriatble]

I have a senior admin/finance post in a LA school. In an academy it would be much better paid (several advertised) but I am told that we are tied to the LA job evaluations and it can't be changed. Also accept that responsibilities would be slightly different in an academy.

However, I have seen what is essentially the same job advertised in another area of the LA. Managing the finance/administration etc for a different group of professionals in the LA. If anything the job description is less substantial because they occupy the Council Offices, so no premises work and there are no safeguarding responsibilities. The pay is about £10k more than mine.

If it's all about the LA job evaluation, shouldn't this job have been assessed on the same basis?

This is why people are leaving LA jobs in droves for better pay doing the same or less. We also have pages of jobs being advertised that are never filled, reach the closing date and then are re advertised and repeat.

Both these jobs are LA jobs though. The same LA. We had a big rebanding exercise recently which took my potential for annual increments away with the stated aim for equal pay for equal work, but this apparently equal job within the same LA is paid substantially more.

I feel it's quite likely that school jobs pay less well because they have traditionally been done by women needing school hours and that as we're all employed by the same employer this should be challenged. I don't know where I'd take the challenge though.

i have experience of job evaluations (work in HR), here are a few key principles:

• the focus on the post, not the person. So you don't get points for being good at your job.

• the process looks at how your role fits in within your organisation and so your score will be ranked against the highest Directors.

• roles are assessed against certain factors. the highest scoring factors tend to be;

decisions - who the buck stops with. impact - how your work affects the whole organisation. You could work directly with the CEO of Coca Cola, but if it's a tiny part of what your company does, you will score lowly. complexity - routine processing Vs tasks with different variables.

• other factors, scores less well;

people management - as a HR person, i don't score highly unless i'm a line manager, even though i advise line managers. finance - same as above, the named budget holder will get the points, not the person who administers the budget.

if you think your role is exactly the same, it's worth asking for a job evaluation on your current role, but i suspect that it's unlikely that you will get a significant increase. My advice would be to vote with your feet and move to an Academy or apply for one of the higher paying roles.

Are you Term Time only? LA staff work all year around.

Yes, but my pay is pro rata though, the FTE equivalent salaries don't compare.

Yes, I understand all that, but these job descriptions really are the same. I manage 20 people in school, only 2 in the new post.

I have had my current role evaluated and have been told it's correct, but one of them must be wrong if the same scoring system is used.

Have a chat with your union , they will know what the criteria is for a regrade. When we went through this there was a scoring matrix , the devil is in the detail with this though getting the JD to match what the matrix is asking for. Took 2 years of plugging away and needed buy in from senior management to make it happen.

When you have HR queries do you deal with the main HR department at the LA or is there a separate function for schools?

I’d email the HR department with both job specs and ask how they’ve been graded differently.

What is the pay?

Up to £44k for the school job, up to £56k for the LA job.

Schools HR isn't dealt with by the LA. We used to buy their HR support, but they sold that several years ago and now schools contract from multiple education HR providers.

And that is your problem. It might all be "local authority", but your HR is dealt with by a different source. So you are not comparing like with like. If you want the local authority job then you apply for it. Or you go to an academy. But your salary is not just determined by a job evaluation scheme (and who manages that scheme) but by additional factors such as available budgets etc. Technically posts across the local authority (which doesn't include schools unless the school has bought into their service and systems) should get graded like for like. I can guarantee you that, like beuaty, that system is skin deep. When creating a new post, I know how much money I can afford to pay, but also how much I need to pay to attract the right candidates. So I tell HR what the answer needs to be and they will help me tweak a word here and there, and I get the result I want. Another service area has staff who do they same thing as mine, just in a different area of work. Their staff are paid two levels below mine. Which is why they have a huge turnover. The Head of Service there has a different view as to what his staff are worth. Which is why a number of them now work for me.

There is a lot of mystique around the science of job evaluation. It is there to protect the employer from claims of discrimination and the like by pretending there is a rationale to how salaries are determined. Like everything else in employment, it is there for the employers needs, not the employees. Your option is to walk and find a better paid job.

But I am employed by the local authority. It's the local authority (apparently) that sets my pay so it should be equal pay for equal work.

I understand entirely that the evaluations are there to protect the employer from discrimination claims, but how does it do that if jobs in schools (predominantly done by mothers) are paid substantially less than a very similar role in the LA offices?

Jobs in local authorities are also done by mothers. But you have already explained it. Your HR is NOT done by the local authority. So your school has chosen to not buy into the policies or all the policies of the local authority. And your payroll may be purchased via the local authority, but that didn't mean that (a) you aren't employed under contract to the school, and (b) you are on the same terms as other local authority employees. There are many different pay schemes, and schools have their own terms.

But in the end, your choices are that you go to your union and get them to support a grievance, which will probably fail at the first hurdle, or you apply for a job that pays more. The bottom line here is that you can waste as much time as you like arguing that you want more money. It isn't going to happen. I'm not telling you that to upset you. I'm telling you because even if you are 100% right (and I doubt you are, because there will be a difference, you just don't know what it is yet) you won't win. If you are earning that much in school finance, then you must have good skills. Put them to use on application forms.

Work in an LA. Interested to know what admin / finance job pays up to 56k in your LA?

It's practice manager for a traded servicearm of the LA.

I have applied for the job and I have an interview. Hopefully it wouldn't be me who benefits anyway, but it's wrong that schools exploit mothers who need school hours in admin jobs (at all levels).

It's a good job women who went before us didn't decide it was all pointless and leave it for someone else to do the fighting.

Check the pay schemes, in our LA schools are under a different one to the LA. It may say which one under the salary section of the job description.

So you are not going to fight - you are going to walk given the chance? I'm not saying you should do otherwise, but don't shoot the messenger. There is almost no possibility that, as a school employee, you are on the same terms as a core LA employee, and that means your entire employment is based on different terms and policies. You clearly don't understand that even though it's been explained several times now. Are you green book, bergundy book, red book - or any one of the other systems of terms of employment? Which is the job you are applying for - because it will almost certainly not be the same terms as school based staff. You don't know? That is the point I am trying to explain to you - these are not all the same jobs with the same terms, no matter what you think.

It's wrong that schools - or any other employer - exploits anyone. So stay, join a union, get to be an elected rep and fight it.

I understand the different terms. I do think understaffed why that's reasonable when they rebanded everyone (and I had to have all the difficult conversations with staff) in order for equal for equal work under the same employer. I.e. not within one school but within all LA schools.

I know how things are, that doesn't mean I have to accept them.

I am just giving this one more go, then I will give up. Local authorities have no control over the salaries paid by "local authority schools". Schools set their own budgets, they control their own HR, etc., etc. That is ALL schools, not just academies. "Local Authority schools" may buy into - or not buy into - the back office systems of the local authority, but whether they do or not, the school determines their own policies. The local authority does control its own employment - the core functions - which, in relation to education are limited to:

1 Back-room services (eg administration of payroll, legal requirements, brokering contracts for, say, IT services)
2 Co-ordinating admissions to all state schools in the area including free schools and academies.
3 Responsibility for children with special educational needs (SEN) and education welfare services.
4 The legal duty to manage the supply of school places.

The entire of the rest of the monies - and the spending of those monies, policies etc - lies with the school. Even if the payroll is administered by the local authority, and even if the staff are technically employed by the local authority, that is a paper exercise and all control lies with the school, with the sole exception that the local authority takes part in the selection of the head teacher. The local authority has no other powers or responsibilities.

If you want to blame somebody for the situation, the people to blame are the government who created this situation. Local authorities have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

That is the reason why the way that local authorities employ their core staff is entirely and totally irrelevant when it comes to the way staff are employed in schools. You may feel hard done to about that. But continuing to blame the local authority for paying more than your school is unreasonable and ridiculous. And whilst I understand that HR / employment may not be your field I am rather surprised to be explaining to someone rather senior in admin and finance how their employment is funded and managed. Because despite claiming that you know how things are you are showing a remarkable lack of knowledge on how things are.

Local authorities absolutely do have control over salaries in LA schools. As I said they've just implemented rebanding across all LA schools. Schools set their budgets but they are tied to LA job evaluations and payscales for individual roles. Academies are different but where the LA is the employer they set the salary scales.

Agree with @Quveas on all points.