When Michael Gove was moved on from secretary of state for education in the coalition government, I commented that we might be surprised to find we miss him in some respects. And so it goes.
The government mantra of freeing up schools from national burdens to let them decide how to deploy support staff, is being trotted out to justify every workforce decision. And the lack of consideration of the unintended consequences of some of these policy decisions (something Mr Gove was always keen to look out for) seems reckless.
The jaw-dropping dumping of the completed Teaching Assistant Professional Standards last autumn was unnecessary and self-defeating.
This was not statutory guidance, it had already been finished and had pulled together an unlikely coalition of stakeholders, including unions, who were prepared to praise the government for the work.
The failure to publish the standards, sneaked out in an answer to a Parliamentary question, looked depressingly shifty and managed to undermine a host of good work and goodwill. Surely the government realises that professional standards can create a motivated professional workforce, which is far more likely to do a better job than an ignored or spurned one?
Yes – they clearly do – as shortly after axing the teaching assistant standards, they endorsed the ones for school business managers (is it the word business that did it?). That jarring inconsistency is poor politics.
But it fits with the depressing new reality. We know that some officials in the Department for Education (DfE) recognise that there are more than just teachers in schools. But does the new government have any interest in half the school workforce?
The National College of Teaching and Learning (NCTL) certainly doesn’t. Last spring, at a hearing of the Education Select Committee, the now former chief executive of NCTL Charlie Taylor, responded to questions from the now former chair Graham Stuart.
Charlie Taylor: “We do not have a specific role around support staff. It is not the role of the national college to be involved in the training of support staff.”
Graham Stuart MP: “Where is that stated? According to the evidence we were given in the evidence check, according to the Department for Education – this is the first line of what they say – the aims of the NCTL include ‘improving the quality of the education workforce’. In what way could any normal reading of ‘the education workforce’ exclude all the support staff who work in the education workforce?”
A good point, that wasn’t answered. And it carries on. At the end of 2015 we found out that the DfE had withdrawn their guidance on the National Occupational Standards for Supporting Teaching and Learning (NOSSTL). Trying to find out more we engaged in a Kafka-esque exchange with the DfE (one response suggesting that we tried “Skills for Health” to find out about nursery nurses!).
After several polite, prompt, but often misleading responses from them, we have learned that the NOSSTL themselves haven’t been withdrawn, but the guidance has. That the NOSSTL are now out of date; but that they will not be updated – oh and no-one has responsibility for these standards anymore.
Having been pointed to Skills for Health website by the DfE, we can see how things could look for school support staff. A positive focus on CPD, training and development and a recognition that these things have an impact on service delivery. Oh for an ounce of that recognition in schools and for the forgotten 50 per cent.
- Jon Richards is UNISON’s national secretary for education and children’s services. Visit www.unison.org.uk/education/