Are we now a luxury?

[Chester]

To be fair proper TA jobs are scarce now anyway.

Most TA's are now one to one special needs assistants and changing nappies of those children whose parents can't be bothered to potty train them before school age. So actually the new title of "Pastoral and learning" is probably more accurate.

But either way you can bet the pay structure is altered in the school/ trust favour..

I disagree, all through our Trust every year group has at least one TA some have 2 and where there are difficult children they have a one to one TA, I think it depends on the school or Trust and what they prioritize , if they want to keep teaching staff long term then they have to support them or they lose good teachers.

[seedfut]

And this is news to us? surely not.
I have the business manager(who is also a director plus several other hats) serving dinners this week as my oppo(she covers lunch and evening cleaning) off ill and I am deemed incapabable of serving lunches-have my 'tificate-whilst BM moans how inconsiderate she is to be ill and work is backing up in the office. Best analogy is; we have the most expensive player running on with the sponge and bucket. Leave em to it. They wont clean toilets, push a hoover round, dust or change a toilet roll. We two will be there to lock up long way after everyone else has been layed off.

[Handyman]

Looking at the original article it seems to be talking about the smaller primary schools with 100 or less pupils that can't afford permanent Site Staff, I know of one school that I've been supporting where they only have 45 pupils , the HT is 0.8 of full time hours and she does all of the compliance checks really well as well as teaching in one class and doing the normal HT tasks.

She relies mainly on willing volunteers to carry out minor maintenance tasks if she can't do them herself, this is not a case of adding layers of management on inflated salaries it's more a case of falling pupil numbers and ultimately the smaller village schools will disappear.

As a Trust Premises Manager we have initiated a scheme whereby we offer out my services when I have spare hours to smaller schools that don't have their own site staff this brings in extra revenue to the Trust and is really interesting for me seeing other schools .

I really think this is likely to be the model going forwards or more of the smaller schools closing down and not a case of the medium to large Primaries losing their Site Staff.

I think would certainly be a better model that what a lot of small schools do around here at the moment which is to put up adverts for months for someone to do caretaking 5-10 hours a week which isn't going to attract many applicants. Some of the secondary schools used to lend/hire out staff to primary schools but that seemed to die off as the secondaries cut staff.

[MrDo]

I think would certainly be a better model that what a lot of small schools do around here at the moment which is to put up adverts for months for someone to do caretaking 5-10 hours a week which isn't going to attract many applicants.

This is what my local primary is doing, for more hours a week though. I applied for the post last month thinking it would be great to be able to walk to work. Unfortunately, the head contacted me saying that because of budget constraints, they were ideally looking for an apprentice and I never got invited for an interview. They are still advertising for a caretaker...

[Handyman]

This is what my local primary is doing, for more hours a week though. I applied for the post last month thinking it would be great to be able to walk to work. Unfortunately, the head contacted me saying that because of budget constraints, they were ideally looking for an apprentice and I never got invited for an interview. They are still advertising for a caretaker...

It's the way it seems to be at the moment. I have been looking for a new job for a while now, and there are jobs I interviewed for months ago and they talked about how desperate they were to get someone in as quickly as possible but then sometimes didn't bother even getting back to me and they are still being advertised. Employers holding out for the 'perfect' candidate who is amazingly skilled, has tonnes of experience, and is willing to work for peanuts. Guess the interviewers/HR aren't having to do extra work to cover the role for months on end while they keep extending the deadline.

It isn't like it works out necessarily anyway, I have heard SLT boasting about how brilliant their new hire is going to be and they must have gotten completely taken in at interview because they turn out to be so useless at the job they could have picked someone at random off the street more suited.

[Dean 08]

Thankfully, following a forced absence due to illness, I think my school is committed to protecting my budget and employment.
The management almost ran out a red carpet on my return after two months, and actually ran out a long list of jobs.
Despite the help from a Site Manager from a nearby school for a few hours a week, they were somewhat lost when it came to the upkeep of the school.
However, if this episode hadn't happened, I think my position may have been under review. The likely outcome being reduced hours and a much smaller budget.
Our work is mostly unseen, a lot of urgent repairs are not noticed as urgent due to the lack of compliance knowledge, and the general donkey work is beneath most of the highly educated.
This article will be unlikely to change the way our profession is seen, but it may highlight the amount of poop (sometimes literally) we clear up.

[Handyman]

Very much the "don't know what you've got till it's gone" situation . I wonder how many headteachers who are complaining about having to unblock toilets etc. have pushed out committed site staff to save a bit of money and then not realised how much they did for the school until it was too late and can't afford to pay for agency caretakers or attract someone permanent of the same quality?