New National Job Profiles for School Support Staff

New national grades and job profiles for School Support Staff have now been agreed between employers and the school workforce unions.

These job profiles recognise the professional roles that support staff play in our schools today and also provide opportunities for training and development.

Although these set out a national career structure, salary grades will be determined through negotiations between the school workforce unions and LEAs, using the agreed national pay spine.

Jude Brimble, GMB National Officer, said: "This is a crucial part of the jigsaw that will ease the implementation of the historic agreement for schools. Local Authorities need to work with school support trade unions to negotiate grading structures locally as a matter of urgency and together we can ensure that all schools introduce proper structures which reflect the extended roles in the National agreement."


New Job Profiles

The job profiles cover three strands of School Support Staff but will allow for four career paths:

	Teaching Assistant Pedagogy: those supporting teaching and learning
	Teaching Assistant Behaviour/Guidance/Support: those supporting behaviour, exclusions and attendance
	Curriculum Resource Support: specific support in curriculum/technical areas
	Admin & Organisation: from general administration to budgetary responsibility

Guidance for School Support Staff

The guidance for School Support Staff covers:

	Training and development, which encourages better planning of development opportunities for support staff.
	Discouraging the use of Fixed Term Contracts unless they can be objectively justified
	Job profiles which will provide the starting points for local decisions to set salary grades selected from the NJC's salary spine. Local decisions will be needed for more detailed work on job descriptions

School Support Staff - The Way Forward guidance notes are available for download here (PDF 44KB)

If you do not have GMB representation in your school and would like further information, please contact us to arrange a visit.