The NASUWT teachers' union (National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers) has come out with accounts of redundancies of some staff who are all essential to the COVID safety measures which are needed in schools and the teachers’ union are also warning of there being funding shortfalls as well as the risk of jobs being lost in many schools, especially among support staff members, who may help with COVID control measures outside of the school day. The Department for Education have offered support upon seeing this to schools for increased staffing as well as raised safety costs.
In the first lockdown in March 2020, the Department for Education announced that there would be funding for additional COVID costs in schools such as free school meals and cleaning. However, the teachers' union have stated that the terms for this funding were "unnecessarily restricted" as for example, schools could claim for extra cleaning costs in the case of a COVID outbreak however, they could not claim for cleaning to prevent an outbreak. Cases of high costs in some schools for covering teachers who were kept at home as a result of the pandemic were also found, but there was limited eligibility for reclaiming staffing costs, the union has said. This shows that although the funding has been said to be given, in cases they cannot be accessed and the amount of money that the schools have is not enough.
The funding report also talks on overpay for leaders of academy trusts. The union has found out that the combined salaries of the chief executives in the 20 largest academy trusts in 2018-19 cost £4.72m, or an average of £236,000 for each chief executive (which is clear overpay). NASUWT president Phil Kemp will tell the conference: "The snouts have to come out of the trough" and public money has to be protected from the worst excesses of a deregulated education system. He will also be calling for a national pay scale "as soon as possible and measures put in place to ensure all employers in education adhere to it". This overpay for these leaders of the academy trusts is money that could instead go to places where it is more needed such as the schools that need money for covering teachers.
