A spokesperson for the GMB said that in many cases, school support staff were facing non-renewal of yearly contracts rather than redundancy, making it difficult to gauge the full extent of job losses. 'The Government's workforce agreement with the unions is meant to be tackling this by putting teaching assistants on proper contracts, but at the moment, the funding doesn't seem to match the philosophy. We're supportive of the philosophy, but the funding needs to be addressed.'
Christina McAnea, Unison's national secretary for education, said the union was carrying out a survey of its teaching assistant members to find out how many faced losing their jobs. She said, 'This time of year you always get a flurry of redundancy notices, and it's definitely higher than normal this year. Worryingly, we are also getting some reports of schools cutting teaching assistants' hours or replacing qualified nursery nurse staff with cheaper, non-qualified staff.'
At the end of May the GMB expressed anger over the approach being taken in Leeds, where 30 teachers and 49 school support staff, including teaching assistants and nursery nurses, are facing compulsory redundancy across 25 schools. These figures are forecast to rise to 65 teachers and 81 support staff by the end of the year. Steve Huckerby of the GMB, which represents many of the affected staff, said, 'Most employers in normal circumstances who value their staff would ask for volunteers in the first instance, prior to any redundancies taking place.'
Local authorities say that staff are being laid off because of falling school rolls as well as funding shortfalls. In Sunderland, 38.5 school support staff are being made redundant from 31 August because of falling school rolls. In Essex, falling rolls account for ten redundancies among teaching assistants and administrative staff, while pressure on the budget accounts for 17.
