MORE than half (52%) of school support staff across the UK have experienced stress, anxiety or depression as they struggle to cope with their workloads, according to a new survey published by Unison this week.
Two-fifths (41.5%) of those who took part in the survey said they had difficulty in completing their work, and more than one in eight (13.4%) said they found it impossible to manage all that was being asked of them.
Unison believes these findings highlight a crisis in health and well-being engulfing schools, which could lead to a mass exodus of hardworking, dedicated staff unless urgent action is taken by the government.
Almost half of support staff (47%) said they are considering leaving their jobs, citing issues like low pay, stress and huge workloads. Many said it was difficult to talk about the pressures of their jobs, with two-fifths (40%) saying they felt unable to report concerns about the size of their workload to managers.
Respondents to the survey reported instances of teaching assistants regularly taking on extra work because schools were persistently understaffed. One said: ‘Staff cuts are at a dangerous level. People are off sick due to stress because there aren’t enough staff. Teaching assistants are taking on teaching roles on a regular basis.’
Another said: ‘Classrooms are strained – every single teaching assistant is doing far more than they are paid for. They are covering classes constantly with no support – it is making people depressed.’
Unison’s head of education Jon Richards said: ‘It’s shocking that more than half the UK’s school support staff are now experiencing stress, anxiety or depression because they are being given way too much to do. These are dedicated professionals, but with too few of them employed for the amount of work that has to be done, schools are increasingly relying on the goodwill of staff.
‘Teaching assistants are putting in nearly four hours of unpaid overtime each week, and with increasing cuts in school support staff numbers, the situation can only get worse. With almost half of school support staff considering leaving their jobs due to low pay, stress and workload, there’s a danger that if the government doesn’t buck up its ideas soon, parents will start to notice the impact in the classroom.’
Unison is calling on the government to establish a national initiative with unions and employers to come up with recommendations for schools to reduce workload pressure on support staff. Unison is also urging the government to commission an independent study into the effect that school funding changes are having upon the attainment of pupils and on the health and well-being of staff.
The survey, conducted in March and April of this year, was based on responses from 14,514 staff across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Unison represents more than a quarter of a million support staff in schools, 150,000 of whom are teaching assistants.
• The capital will see more fire deaths if the next Mayor of London does not tackle the London Fire Brigade waiting times crisis, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) in London said this week. The stark warning came as the FBU released a new video which endorsed Labour candidate Sadiq Khan’s campaign for city hall.
The video, called Every Second Counts, shows how a number of deaths have been linked to lengthy response times to fires. Paul Embery, regional secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) in London, said: ‘The claim made by Boris Johnson that you can cut frontline firefighter jobs, close stations and axe equipment and still maintain the same level of public safety has been shredded.
‘The next mayor will need to take urgent action to deal with a problem which is contributing to the deaths of Londoners. The Fire Brigades Union believe Sadiq Khan is the best choice for London and its firefighters.’
The London Fire Brigade have a six-minute attendance time target for the first fire engine to make it to the scene of an emergency and an eight-minute target for the second engine. A series of fire deaths have been linked to fires not being attended to on time.
The victims include Choi Yip who jumped from the third floor of his residence which was on fire in October 2015 after it took more than 13 minutes for a fire engine to arrive. Raymond Lister died in February after the first fire engine took nearly nine minutes to reach him.
Dr Claire Sheppey died in March when the attendance time for the second fire engine was breached. The government’s own figures, published by the Department for Communities and Local Government last year, show how response times to fires are now at a 20-year high across the country.
l Performance management in the civil service is ‘divisive, unfair and demotivating’ an extensive survey by PCS reveals. Among results that ought to shame the Cabinet Office and employers is the revelation that only 2% felt it was fair to require at least 10% of staff to get a ‘must improve’ marking.
Neither those on the receiving end, nor the line managers who have to use these appraisal systems had any faith in them. Only 4% of respondents said performance management ‘generates healthy competition between team members’, with just 6% of line managers agreeing with this statement.
Asked whether it was ‘a good way to build the team,’ only 6% agreed it was and the same percentage of line managers said it ‘encouraged teamwork’. More than half of respondents said performance management was ‘used to bully and harass staff’ and only 12% of line managers described it as ‘a clear and transparent way of managing’.
PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘These results are devastatingly clear and show a system that is not only unfair, divisive and demotivating, but also time-consuming and ineffective. The kinds of processes that use forced rankings have been abandoned in other industries for these very reasons, and they must be scrapped from the civil service.’
About 120,000 PCS members were invited to take part in the online survey and the 27,000 responses are now being analysed and will be published in full. With half of the respondents saying they have worked in the civil service for more than 20 years, the PCS believes the views it has collected are robust and compelling.
Other findings include:
• More than 4 in 5 agreed the current performance management system should be replaced with one which was fair.
• Three quarters of line managers said they were ‘placed in an impossible position’ by having to give a certain number of staff a ‘must improve’ or ‘top’ box marking.
• Just 9% thought performance management motivated them to do their best, while 86% selected ‘doing the best job I can’ as their motivating factor.
• Only 13% of staff said the current system was helpful for their personal development.
• Fifty-five per cent spent more than two hours ‘preparing for and undertaking’ their performance management review, with 17% spending more than seven hours.
• Almost half said they had ‘no influence at all’ on the objectives they were set for the year, with only 25% saying they had ‘enough’, ‘more than enough’ or ‘complete control’.
• In day-to-day work, 76% said they ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ referred to the objectives they set for their personal development.
