Westminster Declares Teaching Assistants Essential, Explains Why They Can't Be Paid Like It
LONDON, ENGLAND | More than 1,000 teaching assistants and school support workers from Greenwich and Merton planned a Westminster rally on 9 October in a dispute over London weighting. According to the GMB union, support staff in affected schools receive lower Outer London weighting than teachers working beside them, a gap of up to £1,400 a year.
The dispute has exposed an odd feature of the education system. Two people can work in the same building, face the same cost of living and buy the same overpriced sandwich, yet officially live in different Londons.
Two Londons, One Classroom
Under the current arrangement, a teacher may receive Inner London weighting while a teaching assistant six feet away receives Outer London weighting. London's boundary therefore moves during the day. When the teacher walks in, the building is central London. When the assistant approaches the photocopier it drifts to the suburbs. By lunch, the dining hall may have relocated to another borough entirely.
Playground duty is especially tricky. A teacher and an assistant supervising the same game of tag may be standing in different pay zones, so a child can be tagged in Inner London and escape into Outer London before anyone has found the whistle.
The Department for Education has not explained how this affects the National Curriculum, though geography pupils could reasonably conclude that pay policy is more complicated than plate tectonics.
One education consultant proposed a small sign above each classroom door showing the exact geographical status of the adult inside. Teachers would be reminded they work in expensive London. Support staff would be encouraged to shop somewhere cheaper. Perhaps 1974.
Invaluable, but Not Invoiceable
Schools lean heavily on teaching assistants, office staff and lunchtime supervisors. They help children with additional needs, keep order and carry out the many jobs without which the average school would resemble a children's birthday party in a motorway service station.
Politicians routinely call these workers invaluable. It is a useful word. It expresses admiration without naming a figure. A minister can say "invaluable" without ever facing the dangerous possibility of paying somebody more. The method is also applied to nurses, carers and other public staff. Britain has built an economy on applauding people whose pay hasn't kept up with the applause.
Denise Whitlock, 47, a teaching assistant in Mitcham, said she had been called "the backbone of the school" four times this term. "Nobody's offered the backbone a rise," she said. "I'd settle for a chiropractor."
Ms Whitlock said she had also been called "the glue that holds the school together". She looked into it. Glue, she found, is considerably cheaper than a teaching assistant, which she suspects is where the comparison came from.
Council Blames Nation, Nation Blames Process
Merton Council has acknowledged the importance of support workers and says a lasting fix needs national action, because pay arrangements are negotiated nationally. National government works through departments, funding streams and negotiating bodies, so everybody holds enough responsibility to issue a statement and too little authority to solve anything.
A council official can sympathise with the workers. A minister can sympathise with the council. A department can commission a review. The workers can then calculate how much sympathy they will need to pay their electricity bill. Energy suppliers do not accept ministerial concern as payment. The Department for Education publishes its pay guidance online for anyone who wants to see where the buck stops, or whether it was ever invited.
Parents Find Schools Contain Other People
The action has reminded parents that a school is not run solely by a headteacher and a poster about resilience. Remove the support staff and the place quickly finds that children must still be supervised, lunches served, equipment prepared and emergencies handled. None of this can be done by uploading a mission statement.
Parents want schools open. Workers want fair treatment. Councils want funding. Westminster wants a photograph of somebody smiling at a child holding a calculator. Only one of these needs a professional photographer.
The photograph is the easy part. A minister can visit, crouch beside the reading corner and be gone within twenty minutes. The assistant who set up the reading corner, found the books and calmed the child who cried at the camera will not be in the picture. She will be holding the minister's coat.
Whitehall Announces Another Conversation
The traditional government reply to a pay dispute is a negotiating framework. A first discussion sets the terms of reference. A second identifies stakeholders. A third checks whether the stakeholders from the second have been consulted. Eventually someone realises the dispute concerns £1,400. By then the admin costs have passed the cost of settling it.
An accountant suggested looking at the pay structure, finding the difference and deciding how to fund it. Officials rejected the idea because it contained no opportunity to set up a task force. The GMB has asked for something simpler still, which is a decision.
Five Humorous Observations
- "The backbone of the school." Lovely. Nobody ever offered a backbone a pay rise. Nobody ever offered a backbone a chair.
- London moves around the classroom. It's the only place in Britain where geography is decided by who's holding the whiteboard pen.
- Admin costs more than the £1,400. That's not government, that's a man buying a £40 lock for a £10 bike.
- Photocopier in Outer London. Teacher's desk in Inner London. Staff room's in Narnia and the kettle's in Croydon.
- Kids watching all this learn how a country works. Fairness is great, until someone presents a spreadsheet. That's A-level economics in one lunch hour.
Disclaimer: This article comments satirically on a reported pay dispute. Dialogue and administrative scenarios are humorous commentary. It is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Neither is paid London weighting, inner or outer, although the cows have put in a claim. Readers can find more London satire and UK satirical news on the same rate of pay: nothing. https://prat.uk/?p=51966
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