Unions question redeployment advice

Public service union UNISON has spoken out against Department for Education guidance encouraging schools to use support staff “more flexibly”.

The union says it recognises the scale of staff absences in schools caused by Omicron and that learning must continue, but that using low-waged employees as teachers on the cheap amounts to exploitation.

Instead, the union is asking the government to provide schools with extra funding so they are appropriately staffed, and for urgent additional measures such as short periods of online learning to manage high staff absence rates. It says it has been contacted by teaching assistants and support staff including a teaching assistant looking after whole year groups of 90 pupils in the school hall, and a cover supervisor on £14,000 a year who had “a full teacher’s timetable” despite not being trained or paid for these duties.

UNISON is advising support staff not to agree to unsafe practices such as inappropriate cover arrangements.

Meanwhile, the Musicians’ Union has rejected Ofqual boss Ian Bauckham’s suggestions that schools might consider emergency timetable changes that would see music teachers redeployed to other subjects.

The union said that, with pupils still catching up after last year’s lengthy school closures, this is no time to limit the curriculum by cutting statutory subjects like music. It promised to “advocate strongly against any suspension of music in schools”.

https://www.unison.org.uk/news/press-release/2022/01/government-guidance-for-schools-increases-covid-risk-and-threatens-learning-warns-unison

https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/concerns-over-proposals-to-suspend-school-music-lessons