I've written many times about the importance of having a seat around the table, particularly for School Business Leaders and, more widely, support staff, when strategic, policy and system-wide discussions are taking place in the education sector.
In the second WomenEd book ‘Being 10% Braver’, I wrote about the unique position that SBLs have in being able to not only claim a seat at the table, but also being the ones who buy the chairs. And that, of course, is not the physical chairs we sit on, but the unique strategic place that effective and accomplished SBLs hold by leading HR, financial, operational and strategic areas of school leadership. More than any other senior leader, the SBL/CFO/COO will be the person that guides and advises Headteachers, CEOs and their governing boards on the voices, expertise and skills that their organisation needs to flourish in whatever political or financial situation it finds itself.
Educators have lived through some horrendous times in recent years; reduced funding, staff retention issues, a recruitment desert, low morale, an alarming rise in mental health concerns amongst our students and colleagues, and a government who seemed determined to keep the sector pushed to its knees and kept there, with the firm and unlistening hand of the DfE pressed upon our collective heads.
And then things changed.
Winds of Change
The general election brought with it a whole new manifesto for education, and the smoke signals from government appear to give a sense of hope - the new Secretary of State has talked of sweeping change; a new investment in teacher pay, reforms to the broken SEND system, immediate and ongoing changes to the school inspection system, the re-introduction of the Support Staff School Pay Review Body, all with a focus on consultation, and a new raft of advisory bodies made up of proven sector leaders, rather than SpAds.
But, as leaders, we know that system change takes time. Bridget Phillipson has asked for time, and whilst it is a natural urge to want any new regime to fix everything all at once, there are some significant enabling works that are needed before the good stuff can start. Like a £22 billion hole in the public purse. So whilst the quick win of the 5.5% teacher pay award will hopefully go some way to plugging the hole in the staff retention lifeboat, it will be some time before the ship itself is buoyant enough to take to the high seas.
Rabble Rousing
There has been some rabble rousing in the tabloid equivalent of my social media networks recently, where a professional noisemaker seems set on stirring up discontent and upset amongst support staff by starting a campaign which hopes to (sic) “raise awareness and advocate for the rights and recognition of ALL school support staff and non-teaching Schools (sic) Business Leaders. "Isn't this the role of the trade unions?" you might ask? Well yes, but no, because this campaign is also seeking “equal recognition for leadership support staff, regardless of their job titles or positions”. Yes, I had to read it a few times too. So whatever your position in the school, you should be equal to something else, it's unclear what.
There’s more in the same vein, but I won’t give it either my time, or any oxygen. It's divisive narcissism.
So back to those tables and chairs.
The thing about demanding a seat around the table is that you've got to know what purpose the table serves, who owns the table, and who else is sitting at it. Turning up to the wrong table won’t help anyone, nor will having the wrong people around it. These are formative and exploratory times, and the relationships that the new Secretary of State is forming with our sector leaders will set the tone of the DfE's relationship with everyone within the education system. What is needed is reasoned, collaborative experts who share a vision for the betterment of the education system. This is the time for laying out the vision for change, and for our skilled trade union leaders and sector leaders to represent the needs and views of their members with the democratic and diplomatic skills which their roles require. Now is not the time for the unelected angry mob.
The teaching profession took a significant reputational hammering in the Gove and Williamson eras - the idea of “the blob” was perhaps the worst iteration of the previous government's poor opinion of educators, and unfounded allegations of staff room parties during Covid broke down any vestige of remaining trust between us and them. And it really was us and them at the time. The right wing press also played a significant part of its own in fuelling the education recruitment and retention crisis - who on earth would read the Daily Mail and think that working in a school was an attractive proposition?
And the same reputational damage has had an equally catastrophic impact on school support staff. That, combined with soaring inflation, and pay awards way below the cost of living, has meant that most non-managerial term-time workers in schools will earn approximately £6,000 a year less than the annualised minimum wage - and that's with holiday pay thrown in. I honestly don't know how you survive on that.
Support Staff pay is most definitely an issue, but it's part of a far wider need to review the whole funding system for schools. And that will take time, consultation and, most importantly, a massive amount of money. Money which the country simply doesn't have right now.
The teacher 5.5% rise was punchy, and a clear olive branch from Mrs Phillipson to a profession in desperate need of a swift and positive resolution to an already delayed pay award. But we can't expect an increase in the funding required to pay for future rises until the Treasury has had the chance to raise the wider funds needed to plug that £22bn hole.
Comparing Apples With Pears
I have always been a champion of support staff in schools, and there are some significant and fundamental problems in the structures of educational HR which need completely re-inventing. The solution, to my mind, is the creation of an education-wide staff structure which encompasses everyone who works in a school. I will write more on this in due course, but essentially there needs to be a national framework for the sector, which appropriately aligns the existing STPCD with a similar 3-tiered structure (entry level, managerial, leadership) for support staff.
What I am not suggesting is that pay ranges or terms & conditions are matched. Teaching is a wholly separate, graduate-level profession and there are few, if any, appropriate parallels between teaching and support roles. To use the NHS as a comparator, junior doctors are not nurses, physiotherapists are not surgeons and doctors' receptionists are not akin to oncologists. Pay must be determined by skills, experience and qualifications. It would be ludicrous for junior doctors to compare their working time to that of a hospital porter.
So the argument that support staff should be treated the same as teachers is just as ludicrous - apples and pears. I would instead go further still and argue that the term “support staff” in itself is fundamentally flawed - there is no comparison between the work of a TA and the work of a site officer or science technician. All are distinct roles with distinct and unique skill sets. The commonality is around the tiering of pay ranges for similar levels of professional skill and expertise, the lumping together of non-teachers in itself is pointless.
Currently teacher pay is directly set by the Secretary of State for Education, through the advisory body of the STRB. The same is not true for support staff, whose pay is governed by the National Joint Council (NJC), who set the pay for all public sector local government workers.
What about School Business Leaders?
School Business Leaders have always been something of an anomaly in the education world. The role carries significant responsibility for critical business functions of the school
and yet most SBLs are paid on a scale adopted from Local Authority middle managers, created before the role of the SBL ever existed.
As no alternative scale has ever materialised (the only dedicated SBL professional body refuses to dirty its hands with such matters despite over a decade acknowledging the issue), Governing Bodies feel tied to the LA pay scales with no real concept of where to position their SBL.
Trade unions such as NAHT and ASCL have made it clear that they believe that SBL pay should be aligned to other SLT roles, matched to the Leadership spine pay points of colleagues with similar levels of responsibility. In a single school, the role is broadly mapped somewhere between an Assistant Head and a Deputy Head, as a very broad rule of thumb. This does not mean that SBLs can be paid on a teacher’s leadership salary point, but it does mean that Governing Bodies have the power to set local salaries that align to those points, on the NJC pay scale, where the SBL is carrying out strategic leadership responsibilities.
And there’s another rub. The definition of a School Business Leader is so broad that it can range from the CFO of a nationwide academy chain to a part time administration manager of a one form entry primary school. Anyone can call themselves and SBL, there is no professional entry requirement to the profession. This really doesn't help make the case for SBLs to be recruited and treated as senior leaders, when the reality and experience of many Headteachers is that the person holding the title of their school is not operating at that level.
So what’s the solution?
It’s complicated. But the solution lies in the betterment of the profession. Minimum entry levels to the SBL role would be a good starting point. Followed up by tiered levels of expertise matched to a broad pay spine with the flexibility for employers to match the role that they require (not the person, the role) to the appropriate salary range. This would also need to be expanded to meet the increasingly diverse range of SBL-type roles in MATs, but the theory of matching the function to other senior leaders within the organisation’s wider structure remains.
But what of the current SBL who has tried and failed to be treated as a senior leader, and who feels that they should be paid on the ‘leadership scale’? I have a simple but blunt response:
Don’t apply for a job where the salary does not meet your expectations.
Don’t accept additional responsibilities that sit outside of your current role without negotiating a salary review that you are happy with.
If you have tried and failed to be accepted as a senior leader in your school setting, then you have the following options:
1. Review your performance in the role and undertake ongoing professional development
2. Speak to your trade union
3. Make your case with reasoned arguments and financial costings.
4. Discuss your proposal with your Headteacher
5. If unsuccessful, appeal to your Governing Body
6. If none of these things work - leave and find a new job where you are valued and paid according to your worth.
Nothing slows change more than people who enable it. Harsh as it sounds, SBLs who stay in underpaid roles perpetuate the problem. Many schools recruit based on the current pay ranges that ‘most schools’ use, and they carry out online searches for the pay of other similar roles. If we accept low pay as a status quo, it will remain so. If we do nothing about enabling our own progression, nothing will change. School Business Leaders are innovators, negotiators, system changers, challengers and policy setters. If you are unable to change or adapt your own situation to enable your own career progression, and are instead relying on someone somewhere changing something, then perhaps School Business leadership is not the profession for you.
I know that’s harsh, but change needs changers.
I am really hopeful that the Government's decision to reinstate the School Support Staff Negotiating Body will be the first step in bringing support staff pay in the education sector back under the control of a dedicated body. It should mean that pay is considered in line with the cost of living, along with an affordability factor which will assess the impact of any pay rise on school budgets, and therefore tie support staff pay awards and funding together for the first time. The next step will be to work on the national picture of support staff pay structures - that's a much bigger piece of work. What we are seeing, through the reinstatement of the SSSNB is a strong intention to put support staff on the education agenda, and bring in a system that at least parallels that our of teaching collagues. That is a not insignificant step forward and one which I hope will start to bring the collective management of education staff together in a structured, legislative and accountable way. This is what our sector needs - the breakdown of as many barriers to success as we can possibly achieve
Commonality of Purpose
What binds us together as a sector is our vocational desire to make a difference to the lives of young people. And we each do that by bringing our own skills and talents to the roles to which we are best suited. There is no ‘them and us’, there is only us. And we, us, all of us, need to be working together to rebuild a broken system from within. The first step in doing that is to acknowledge that many things are not right, but we are not each other's enemies. We have an opportunity to shape the future of education, and that will not happen until we ourselves write our own proposals for change.
If you are an ECT struggling with the mixed demands of teaching, work together with your peers to write a better programme for ECTs. If you are Head of Department desperate for a change to the national curriculum in your subject area, collaborate with your peers to suggest a better model. If you are a Headteacher struggling to manage the accountability and demands of the role, join a Headteacher network to share your thoughts on how you think this can change. Similarly, if you are a School Business Leader with expertise in both HR and finance, come up with a staffing structure, policy and funding model that works for you, and then collaborate with your networks to model that scenario in multiple schools.
Someone somewhere in Whitehall knows nothing about your working life, you are the expert in you. Use the time spent on voicing negativity to better advantage, by using your own expertise and that of others to write your own solutions. That may be by becoming an active member of your trade union, or it may be by joining a local network of others in your profession. If we do that, we will be able to inform the policy and work of those professional bodies who do, quite rightly, have seats at the top table.
So in summary, what we do not need is more seats around the same table. What we do need is a hell of a lot more tables. Each filled with passionate experts working together to design and build their blueprint for the section of education in which they lead.
Imagine then, what we could achieve!
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