Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

Instead, we could be helping people like Bev, who is now happily a qualified teacher, and many thousands of people—an extra 120,000 support staff have been working in our schools over the past 10 years. There are hundreds of thousands of people working in a very unregulated way, some of whom are paid very poorly but others who are better rewarded. It is the luck of the draw as to where they live. Many of them get a salary that does not cover them during the summer holidays; they are paid only for term time. They are some of the poorest paid people in our society doing some of the most important work to support our children, and they should be protected. The negotiating body gave that protection to them and the Government should be ashamed of themselves for proposing to withdraw it.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I hope that no one in this House would for a moment argue that the value of teaching assistants is in any way diminished by what is happening. Because we value so highly teaching assistants and the work that they do does not seem to lead directly to the need for a national negotiating body for their pay. In fact, I would have thought that because of the wide variety of work that teaching assistants perform, there is a very strong argument for their being allowed to have different terms and conditions of service and different rates of pay according to the job that their employer wants them to do. As the number of academies and free schools is increasing, employers of such people will not be subject to national negotiations. Their employers will be the immediate school in which they are working. Most teachers value the opportunity to have flexible conditions for their teaching assistants so that they can use them for a whole range of things. As the noble Lord has just said, in some cases they are highly professional and the work that they do has national recognition. Others perform much more lowly roles. That is the choice of the school, the teachers the assistants work for and the employers who employ them. I would hope very much that we would recognise the value of teaching assistants more by allowing flexibility than by any rigid national code.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I agree with what has been said about the importance and value of support staff. There are several such people in my own family and I know what a good and important job they do. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will agree with that when he responds. I am a little surprised that the Government are ignoring the recommendation of the ASCL. That is rather unusual. I hope that my noble friend will explain how the proposed system will be better.