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FEATURE


Studies highlight school building risk

The scale of disrepair of school buildings in England and Wales has been revealed, with two surveys estimating that billions of pounds are needed to bring estates up to safe standards.

Two separate studies by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) have estimated that a minimum of £16 billion is needed to fix outstanding repairs and ensure that all schools are structurally sound.

The LGA research follows the scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme by the Coalition Government in July, which claimed that the fund that was being used to rebuild all schools in England was wasteful.

The NASUWT has been at the forefront of protests over the scrapping of BSF and has repeatedly warned of the risks to pupils and school staff from dilapidated buildings.

The Union’s Safe to Teach? research into health and safety in schools found that nearly half of respondents worked in schools with leaking roofs and broken windows, over a third reported damp and slippery corridors to be problems, and poor lighting, both inside the school and on the school site, was reported as an issue by over one in five respondents. Excessive workplace temperatures were also a problem for two thirds of those surveyed.

The LGA research, which is based on a survey of 40% of English councils with the results scaled up to represent all 152, states that a minimum of £15 billion is needed in the period leading up to 2015 to ensure that every child can be taught in a classroom that is safe and structurally sound. The study estimates that a wider total of £29.3 billion is required to improve school buildings beyond minimum health and safety standards.

In Wales, the study was undertaken as local authorities are drawing up 10-15 year plans to improve school buildings. Twelve local authorities out of a possible 22 responded to the WAG study.

The research found that every secondary school in Pembrokeshire and Merthyr Tydfil had ‘major shortcomings’ and that more than half the primary schools in Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot and Ceredigion need ‘considerable’ repairs.

The total repair bill in Wales is estimated to be around £1 billion.

The maintenance backlog includes £147 million of repairs in Swansea and £130.9 million in Caerphilly.

In December, local authorities in Wales will begin the process of bidding for funds for their school building plans from the WAG.

The NASUWT is clear that teachers cannot teach and pupils cannot learn effectively in schools that are unsafe, dilapidated and not fit for purpose. The Union is continuing its fight to ensure that funds earmarked for essential school rebuilding work are not lost in the Coalition Government’s austerity drive.


Further improvements sought on Jersey

The NASUWT is continuing to work on further improvements to the working conditions of teachers on Jersey following the resolution of a long-running dispute with employers earlier this year.

As a result of the strength and solidarity of teachers on the island, the NASUWT was able to secure a major package of improvements to terms and conditions and successfully prevented The States Employment Board from imposing the terms and conditions review on teachers that is to be conducted upon all employees of the States of Jersey. Teachers, unlike the rest of the public sector there, will now have their own discrete and comprehensive review, the scope and application of which will be subject to consultation and agreement with the teacher unions.

The cessation of the dispute with employers followed a high-profile NASUWTorganised rally and march through St Helier earlier this year where over 600 people publically opposed planned cuts to the public sector.

The Union is now working with employers to ensure that further changes to teachers’ working conditions are introduced so that all teachers on Jersey are able to focus on their core role of teaching and learning by the removal of tasks that do not require their skills and expertise. This includes:

• guaranteed planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time for all teachers;
• an end to lunchtime supervision by teachers;
• the establishment of a proper consultation forum for teachers;
• a review of maximum class sizes.

Women members of the NASUWT on Jersey have also benefited from modification to the maternity leave policy, which will now ensure that mothers returning to work will be able to access their lump sum maternity leave pay notwithstanding any absence due to illness. The maternity policy on Jersey provides that half of the maternity pay is withheld until the mother has returned to work for three months. Prior to the dispute resolution, mothers returning to work who were absent for any reason during that time stood to lose the other half of their maternity pay and, further, were not entitled to any sick pay.

The improvements achieved so far have also resulted in a growth in NASUWT membership on Jersey, making the NASUWT the largest teachers’ union on the island, with around three quarters of teachers in membership.