Hundreds missing out on fair pay compensation at Sheffield schools, warn unions and schools
Unions will take further legal advice
Schools are calling for a re-think, as it emerged hundreds of support staff look set to be denied thousands of pounds in compensation because of how they are run.
While Sheffield Council has offered compensation to hundreds of support staff at local authority-run schools over historic pay disparities, staff at foundation schools and voluntary aided schools are being told they will miss out.
Offers have been sent to staff at 38 council schools in the city under the Sheffield Role Review Programme, which has looked at what the authority has been paying some of its traditionally female dominated roles. The total cost of the payouts is expected to run into millions of pounds, Sheffield Council has previously stated.
It is believed to affect jobs including office staff and teaching assistants, but not teachers.
But the council says because governing bodies are the legal employer in foundation schools and voluntary aided schools, there is no basis to include them inclusion in the payouts.
Foundation schools and voluntary aided schools, which are funded by the local authority but have more freedom to change the way they do things, are sometimes supported by representatives from religious groups.
Unions say they do not have a legal case to fight for payments for their staff under the current law, and will now take further legal advice.
However schools, many of which were council controlled schools for years, are calling for politicians to intervene on what some feel is morally wrong even if it is legally correct.
Lucy Fallon, who chairs the board governors at Intake Primary School, one of the foundation schools affected, has written to MP Louise Haigh calling for action.
There are concerns that while it may be technically correct in law to cut the foundation and voluntary aided schools from the payouts, it does not reflect the reality in which the schools operate.
Ms Fallon said that the budget framework, the terms and conditions they adopt, and the structures within which foundation and voluntary aided schools operate, are all derived from or strongly influenced by Sheffield Council. They follow the same national frameworks, operate within the same local system, and employ staff in roles that are directly comparable to those in maintained schools.
She said: “Against that backdrop, the decision to provide redress for historic pay inequities in one part of the system, while excluding another on what is effectively a technical distinction, feels fundamentally unjust.
“It is difficult to explain to committed staff - who have worked under the same expectations and constraints as their peers in maintained schools - that they are excluded from redress simply because of governance arrangements that, in many cases, were encouraged at the time.”
She added: “Even if the current legal framework limits the council’s direct responsibility, there is surely a moral and civic case for finding a solution that does not leave a group of staff excluded on what appears to be a technicality.”
Peter Davies, the public sector senior organiser for North East, Yorkshire, and Humber, for the GMB union, said that the legal advice the union had been given was that the employer is solely the local authority in the case of a school type being a maintained/community school, or a voluntary controlled school.
But in the case where a school is a foundation school or voluntary aided school, then the employer is the school/governing body, rather than the local authority, regardless of control.
He said: “With this in mind, we have not informed members in these schools that they have equal pay claims, as the legal advice is that they would not have a successful claim against Sheffield City Council.
“As disappointing as this news is, we do have an obligation to be honest and transparent about the prospects of success in a tribunal."
He said settlements could only been fought for where opposite sex comparisons within their own employment could be shown, it was unlikely to be shown in foundation and voluntary aided schools.
He added: “We are, however, continuing to explore whether this issue can be tested further as it does not seem fair when the council still has some control and we will be up-dating these workers once we have met with the local MP, revisited the issue with the Council and taken further legal advice.”
Sheffield Council's website lists its foundation schools as Ballifield Primary, Broomhill Infants, Heritage Park Foundation School (7-16), Holgate Meadows Foundation School (7-16), Intake Primary, Sharrow Primary, and Stradbroke Primary.
It lists its voluntary aided schools as Clifford All Saints CE Primary (Aided), Deepcar St John’s CE J, Parson Cross C of E Primary, and St Theresa’s Catholic Primary.
Mr Davies said that academies would also not get payments from the council as they are independent employers with no connection to the council.