Which admin support role in school should I go for? not enjoying current one

[Winterchills9826]

I want to continue working in education for at least another 5 years. I currently work in a primary school office with one other lady. I've only been there 6 months.
On the whole I love it but wow I cannot believe the level of responsibility you have and how much work there is to do for minimum wage. I feel burnt out at the end of every day, don't get a break , don't get a proper lunch break etc.
There are other roles within schools , particularly high schools that I am interested in but I don't know if in reality it would be any different.
I've applied for an attendance role at a high school , as I love that side of my job. But in reality am I going to be the most hated member of staff by parents?
If you work in a school (particularly a high school) are the roles split more rather than having to do absolutely everything in a primary school?

Primary schools do include different responsibilities into one role. Generally speaking this won't actually have any impact on the grade of the role because the type of work and knowledge is deemed to be the same even though you are dealing with a higher workload and doing more gear shifting. Generally speaking there will be more variety of duties in a smaller establishment.

Yes, there’s more specialising in a secondary school compared to primary (my colleague used to work primary and said she’s struggling with not being in charge of everything!)

However the burn-out, no breaks, no lunch break (no pee breaks!) is the same in my experience (smallish very poorly funded secondary). I’m on the reception desk which by nature is full-on but there’s no-one to cover me or help and I’m responsible for parent queries (they come in wanting to see someone RIGHT NOW all throughout the day) as well as student reception (truancy, refusal to leave reception, ‘I feel sick’, pastoral/crying), first aid. Kids generally swarm over together at the end of break/lunch and I’ll have to work my way through 20+ queries, trying to get them up to lesson when most of them are visiting me especially to avoid this. Rarely any SLT or SEN support available and some of these kids are really challenging.

…Can you tell I’ve had a bad day 🤣? Some secondaries, controversially those with high PP have 2+ full time on reception and generally much better staffing. We have about 6 TAs and our sister school (only 200 more kids) has 30. I’d be tempted to check staffing levels before you apply or at least at interview. We’re tight everywhere and crying (me today!), going off with stress is very common.

Attendance - my colleague hates it, yes she’s very much the punch bag and the shot messenger. She also has to scurry around checking classrooms for missing kids all day because no-one in SLT is willing to introduce a watertight system.

Attendance wouldn't be my choice!