School Staffing & Employment Issues for Governors Paul Garside – HR Manager, Bay Education Trust
Overview Context Managing Staff Absence Staff Performance & Pay Safer Recruitment Staffing Appeals Flexible Working Requests Questions
DfE Governance Handbook (Jan 2017) All boards, no matter what type of schools or how many schools they govern, have three core functions: Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction; Holding executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils, and the performance management of staff; and Overseeing the financial performance of the organisation and making sure its money is well spent.
DfE Governance Handbook (Jan 2017) Boards are not inspectors and it is not their role to assess the quality or method of teaching or extent of learning. They are also not school managers and should make sure they do not interfere in the day-to-day running of the school. Both are the role of executive leaders.
Managing Staff Absence “The Trust Board regards the excellent attendance of both pupils and staff as integral to the success of the schools within the Trust.” Is staff absence a problem in your school? How do you know? What is the school doing to reduce the level of staff absence in school?
Staff Performance & Pay Inspectors (Ofsted) will consider whether governors: understand how the school makes decisions about teachers’ salary progression and performance performance manage the headteacher rigorously
Staff Performance & Pay DfE Advice – Implementing your school’s approach to pay: Role of the Governing Body – assure themselves that appropriate arrangements for linking appraisal to pay are in place and can be applied consistently, and that pay decisions can be objectively justified.
Staff Performance & Pay School Teachers’ Pay & Conditions Document: Pay decisions must be clearly attributable to the performance of the teacher in question. What is the role of your Governing Body in the pay decisions process? What information do you receive to support the pay decisions?
Staff Performance & Pay Report to the Governing Body on Teachers’ Performance and Pay Recommendations: Anonymous summary – current pay point, TLRs, eligible for progression, threshold application? Anonymous performance summary – pupil progress, book scrutiny, lesson obs, performance objectives. Pay Recommendations Trends – year on year comparison
Staff Performance & Pay Did you know? Where a teacher is away from school because of maternity leave it is unlawful for the school to deny that teacher an appraisal and subsequent pay progression decision because of her maternity.
Safer Recruitment It is vital that schools and colleges create a culture of safe recruitment and, as part of that, adopt recruitment procedures that help deter, reject or identify people who might abuse children. Governing bodies and proprietors should prevent people who pose a risk of harm from working with children by adhering to statutory responsibilities to check staff who work with children….. (KCSIE)
Safer Recruitment How does your Governing Body know that your school is meeting its statutory responsibility to check staff? What about volunteers in school? Single Central Record – where is it? is it up to date? Designated ‘Safeguarding’ Governor?
Safer Recruitment Do all staff understand their responsibilities as set out in KCSIE? Do Governors make use of informal and formal visits to school to assess safeguarding arrangements (including safer recruitment)? Does your school have a Governor Visits Policy? Culture shift required?
Safer Recruitment Did you know? Ian Huntley presented open references to Soham College which they neither verified or followed up with reference requests of their own. The Soham enquiry highlighted that if the school had been aware of information about Ian Huntley’s past behaviour he would probably not have been employed.
Safer Recruitment Don’t think that it can’t happen in your school. The key to safer recruitment is developing and maintaining a culture of vigilance.
Internal Appeal Hearings Procedure will vary from school to school depending on scheme of delegation and school policies. Committee of Governors often involved at appeal stage of a process that leads to the dismissal of an employee e.g. disciplinary, capability, redundancy, health. Can also be involved in other procedures, e.g. grievance, flexible working requests.
Internal Appeal Hearings Not a rehearing of the case. Appeal panel should be satisfied that: An adequate process / investigation took place; The member of staff was given a chance to make representation and that their response was given fair consideration; Having regard to all the circumstances the decision was reasonable;
Flexible Working Requests Employment Rights Act 1996: All employees have the statutory right to make a flexible working request provided they have worked for their employer for 26 weeks continuously at the point the application is made. An employee can only make one statutory request in any 12 month period. Consideration process, including appeal, must be completed within 3 months.
Flexible Working Requests Duty on employer to consider the request. Governors may be involved in the decision making process and / or an appeal stage. A meeting should be held with the employee to discuss the request (not necessary if it is intended to approve the request).
Flexible Working Requests If the request is rejected it must be for one of 8 business reasons set out in the legislation e.g. detrimental impact on quality, burden of additional costs. Is it possible to offer a compromise? What about a trial period? Potential to result in an Employment Tribunal claim but employees can’t complain to a tribunal just because their flexible working request was rejected.
Flexible Working Requests Employees can complain to an employment tribunal if the employer: didn’t handle the request in a ‘reasonable manner’ wrongly treated the employee’s application as withdrawn dismissed or treated an employee poorly because of their flexible working request, eg refused a promotion or pay rise rejected an application based on incorrect facts
Flexible Working Requests DfE statement (March 2016) “….we know that a lack of flexible options creates a barrier, in particular for women who take career breaks, and we will soon be encouraging further work to support flexible working for female teachers and to encourage women to return to the classroom."
And finally……… Questions????