- Conference
- 2015 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 18 February 2015
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference notes that increases in workload are causing severe problems for many school support staff across the UK.
UNISON’s survey of over 15,000 school support staff members showed that:-
1)80.4% (10,804 respondents) said they were concerned about workload. The majority of respondents;
2)74.0%, said they regularly worked unpaid overtime;
3)81.0% of those working unpaid overtime said they were forced to do so as a result of increasing workloads;
In England the Department for Education (DfE), under pressure from a dispute with some teaching unions, launched the Workload Challenge. This initiative took the views of teaching staff on unnecessary workload issues and suggestions on how problems might be resolved, with a view to making recommendations to alleviate the problems. Following an intervention from UNISON the DfE entered discussions with school support staff unions to do a similar exercise for support staff.
Conference calls on the Local Government Service Group Executive to:-
a)Continue to campaign for a reduction in support staff workload;
b)Work with UK governments on strategies to reduce workload problems;
c)Make it clear to governments that strategies for reducing workload for teachers should not negatively impact on support staff;
d)Produce materials for branches that address workload issues.