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Support staff

The NEU represents support staff members across the UK in the maintained, academy, free school, independent, further education and sixth form sectors.

Spring newsletter

Membership of the NEU is open to any person working in the education sector: teachers, teaching assistants, examination officers, technicians, librarians, lecturers, managers, administrators and ancillary staff. Support staff are represented by their National Council.

Support staff in most independent schools are employed on a range of terms and conditions that are determined by their individual contracts. Details of support staff pay should be included in a written school pay policy, and school policies on employment-related matters should be published in a staff handbook or on the school’s intranet.

In more than 100 independent schools, the NEU is recognised by the employer for collective bargaining purposes, and in most instances, the Recognition Agreement covers teachers and support staff. This means that NEU members at the school negotiate with management on their pay, hours, holidays and other matters.

Advice

Teaching assistant with child

Support staff pay

Sister unions have requested NEU input into negotiations for this year’s pay claim.

Pay graphic

Pay scales

Pay scales for support staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Male woodwork teacher

Working conditions

This advice is designed to help support staff working in state, academy and independent schools to deal with the increase in the quantity and complexity of work for school support staff.

Graphic of files saying quality teaching, planning, data, marking

Appraisal

Many employers still do not have in place performance management processes for classroom support staff, nor for other categories of support staff.

Teaching assistant with child

Lone working risk assessement

NEU believes none of its members should be more at risk in their jobs than other workers just because they are required to work on their own.

Young child talking to woman

Term-time working

An initial section of guidance on term-time working has now been agreed between the local government employers and the recognised trade unions.

Two women in discussion

Job descriptions and evaluations

Guidance for support staff around job descriptions – their accuracy, and how to go about changing them, and details on job evaluation.

Children in classroom with teacher

Classroom observations

It is important that a support staff member understands the reasons for any observation and what elements will be observed and commented on.

TUC dispute and annual conference

Last November, the NEU began ballots of both our teacher and support staff members for action over pay and, crucially, over the funding of pay rises in schools.

Three unions – Unison, GMB and Unite – made a complaint to the TUC alleging that our ballot was an organising activity intended to recruit support staff to our union.

We maintained that the purpose of the ballot instead was to ensure that we were putting as much pressure as possible on the Government to put money into schools. We saw this funding as crucial to ensure that redundancies and cuts in hours are avoided and that it could allow pay levels to be better.

However, the TUC disputes panel found against us and as part of the judgement they require that we place this paragraph on our website.

“NJC unions, Unison, GMB and Unite, brought a complaint to the TUC under the TUC’s Disputes Principles and Procedures, relating the NEU’s decision to ballot school support staff and related campaigning activities. Complaints that NEU were in breach of Principle 2, relating to knowingly and actively taking into membership existing or recent members of another union and Principle 3, relating to actions that would have the effect of undermining the position of an established union, were upheld by a Disputes Committee. 

The NEU is not recognised for collective bargaining on behalf of support staff and is not seeking and will not seek recognition to collectively bargain on behalf of support staff. NEU will not undertake any campaign or organising activity on behalf of support staff that could be construed as infringing on the established collective bargaining arrangements that exist without the express agreement of NJC unions, respecting the spheres of influence of those unions.”

This paragraph is in contradiction with a motion passed at our conference this year, which lists these action points:

Conference instructs the Executive to:

  1. Seek, at the earliest opportunity, recognition and negotiating rights for our support staff members.
  2. Liaise with the local government unions representing support staff to make clear our desire to work with them, to strengthen union density and effectiveness among support staff.
  3. Report back to the Support Staff National Council on any developments in respect of negotiations with our sister unions regarding recognition and negotiating rights and recruitment.
  4. End the undertaking not to actively or knowingly recruit support staff.

Because of this difference, the NEU will be seeking meetings with Unison Unite and GMB to explore how we can resolve the contradiction between these positions.

Support staff pay

Unison Unite and GMB are all balloting their school support staff members alongside their council staff members in disputes about this year's National Joint Council (NJC) pay offer. NEU has written to those unions expressing solidarity with their campaign and stating that we want to talk with them about balloting our support staff members to make that solidarity very practical.

We have also said that we want to explore how we can fulfil another part of the TUC judgement – that a mechanism with the other unions should be set up so that the views of NEU support staff members are taking into account in NJC negotiations.

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