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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE


Mandatory Training for Governors Welcome

Schools and colleges in Wales are to be encouraged to work more collaboratively in a bid to save money and work more efficiently.

Small schools are likely to be asked to federate with others, with one management team overseeing a number of schools to push for more joint working and polling of resources.

The push for increased collaboration is part of a package of measures recently introduced by the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) which it believes will make the education system more effective.

The NASUWT supports moves to encourage closer ties between schools which should introduce greater economies of scale in the purchasing and use of resources and improved sharing of pedagogy between teachers. However, the Union is clear that this must not be used as a smokescreen for redundancies or any attempts to downgrade the pay and working conditions of school staff.

School governors are also to undergo compulsory training in future to improve their knowledge and understanding. The NASUWT has long argued that mandatory training should be introduced for all school governors to help them discharge their considerable and often complex responsibilities.

The creation of any new foundation schools in Wales is also being prohibited under the measures, a move welcomed by the NASUWT. Foundation status, where the governing body is granted greater powers over the running of a school, has proved to be the first step towards the privatisation of schools in England.

However, the introduction of a ban on more foundation schools in Wales makes the WAG’s recent decision to grant foundation status to Whitchurch High School in Cardiff even more mystifying.

The NASUWT objected to the request by Whitchurch High School’s governing body to change its status and believes that no clear and compelling reason has been given for rejecting the Union’s argument, particularly in light of the decision to prohibit further foundation schools.


"School governors are also to undergo compulsory training in future to improve their knowledge and understanding."


School funding blow

The Coalition has dealt schools in England yet another blow by hitting them with a last-minute £155 million budget cut.

The Department for Education (DfE) has made a 5% reduction in the Standards Fund, money that is allocated to schools to pay for services such as free school meals and extra tuition for children who need help with literacy or numeracy.

The unexpected cut to the fund was announced after local authorities had already allocated school budgets for the forthcoming year and has resulted in widespread disruption and turmoil for schools.

As with many of the Coalition’s reforms, it is the schools serving the most deprived areas that will be hit hardest, as a proportion of the money allocated under the Standards Fund related to deprivation.

The £155 million reduction is in effect a 0.4% cut in the Coalition’s main funding for schools in 2011/12 and comes on top of cuts to local authority funding and a savage programme of reforms and cuts to education, including the axing of Building Schools for the Future, universal free school meals and one-to-one tuition.

The NASUWT believes that hasty and unilateral removal of the Standards Fund once again demonstrates the contempt that this Coalition Government has for the work of schools and local authorities and the determination of ministers to try to obscure the full scale of cuts it is making to the education service.


Independent Review backs national framework

An independent review of pay in the public sector has backed the NASUWT’s belief that the national framework of teachers’ pay and conditions must be retained.

In his Government-commissioned report on fair pay, economist Will Hutton rejected the idea of introducing a cap on senior public servants’ pay, including that of headteachers, or benchmarking salaries against that of the Prime Minister. These recommendations were welcomed by Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, but she also raised concerns about the lack of focus in the report on tackling low pay.

The emphasis in the Report on the need for clear pay frameworks and greater fairness and transparency on salaries reinforced the need to retain the teacher’s contract, she argued.

“This underlines the importance of maintaining the current system for teachers’ pay and the folly of abolishing the Support Staff Negotiating Body,” she said, adding: “the real danger will be that some of the recommendations do not feed the Coalition’s irrational contempt of public service workers and therefore are unlikely to see the light of day.”

Further details are available at www.nasuwt.org.uk/FairPay