It’s clear that our schools struggle to manage tight budgets and it is only the goodwill of our members who are the backbone of our schools who keep them functioning, says the union for schools support staff, GMB.
GMB recently carried out a snapshot survey of school staff in the London and Eastern region that shows nearly three quarters (73%) of school support staff are regularly being asked to work unpaid hours.
The results of the snapshot sent to GMB London school support staff are:
1) 73% of support staff regularly attend work earlier and finish work later than their contracted hours without pay
2) 78% of support staff regularly work through their breaks
3) 40% of support staff who attend school trips do not receive additional pay
4) 87% of support staff carry out duties which are not part of their job description
5) 31% of support staff regularly teach in the absence of the qualified teacher, of which 70% receive no additional pay
Daren Parmenter, GMB Regional Organiser said:
“These results show that our members who work in schools work above and beyond their contracted duties at a time when the government is proposing to make the largest educational budget cuts of £3bn by 2020.
It is clear that our schools struggle to manage tight budgets and it is only the goodwill of our members who are the backbone of our schools who keep them functioning.
GMB will be campaigning vigorously to highlight the importance of the roles carried out by our members as we have seen austerity measures in other sectors of our public services which now threaten the future education of our children.
How can our schools, many of which are facing re-structures, sustain the severe future cuts of between five per cent and 30% in their budgets when clearly, as our survey results show, they are unable to pay their support staff accordingly for the substantial extra duties they carry out?”
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