Cinderella’s prince is bloody late!

The numbers of support staff working in schools has grown exponentially, from a few thousand in the early 90s to upwards of 24,000 today.

Again and again, teacher surveys report support staff as being critical to the running of a a successful school. Assessment for learning, among other changes, requires more intensive teaching practices and a workload that would be unsustainable – without support staff.

Yet the employment of support staff is, basically, a shambles.

Beginning pay rates are dismal, and at best, a crude reflection of skills and knowledge. Training and qualifications have grown ad hoc, with many qualifications lacking credibility or failing to add value. Good examples of work design, best practice and professional development flower occasionally in a desert of reactive appointments.

NZEI continues to recruit support staff members to create a strong enough voice to influence the Ministry of Education and the government.

Support staff have the potential to be a tremendous resource in this government’s stated aim of lifting productivity in schools – but until the employment issues are addressed, support staff are a force with potential to burn.

Fair deal campaign

NZEI’s support staff members are going hard to get the government to see sense.
In August, around 1,200 marched on Fair Deal Friday and visited MPs, presenting an estimated 17,000 signatures from teachers, principals, parents and boards of trustees to MPs around the country.
After a long working-party process to address key issues last year, the new government this year abandoned the process and offered support staff a 0 percent pay rise for 2009, and a tinkering of the steps in grade A in 2010. The bottom step would remain at $12.94.

Check out NZEI’s support staff website, www.fairdeal.org.nz for the latest campaign news.

Support staff help turn school around

‘We were running a red card programme. We were abused the whole time – kicked, spat at – by parents and children, and we got very little work done,’ says Jenny Peters who’s been a support staff member at Waitara Central School for more than 20 years.

Her decile two school in North Taranaki shows just what can be achieved when support staff are valued members of the teaching team.

Three years ago new principal Sharren Read arrived at Waitara Central to a falling roll of 118. Today it’s 137 and rising. Maori students make up 63 percent of the school, from a community plagued by high unemployment.

Sharren changed the school’s focus from behaviour management to learning – and support staff couldn’t be happier.

Nowadays, says Jenny, ‘It’s a more rewarding interaction with the children. Recently I got an award at assembly for some work I’d done with a child. I definitely feel valued – and I’ve not felt like that before. It’s so rewarding to see the change in the child.’ Jenny had been working with a boy who was an elective mute – now he’s talking.

Support staff keep reflective journals and administer a number of learning programmes, including the Tape Assisted Reading Programme, ABC for literacy, extended learning with able students, and Hei Awhiawhi Tamariki ki Te Panui Pukapuka – as well as the usual sports, canteen, library, and admin duties.

Dawn Taylor, a veteran of 18 years, had been the kaiawhina until the school’s bilingual unit closed. Now she wears a name tag, Teacher’s Assistant, and besides administering learning programmes, says, ‘I like a challenge. If there’s a kiddy I know, born and bred here, and I know that face when it shows up – I ask questions about kuia, koro, whanau. A picture comes into my mind. There might not be much home environment, not much support. Those are the ones I target. If you achieve a dot in one kid, it’s a lot.’
As principal, Sharren says support staff can be the key to finding out what is holding back a child’s learning. ‘Children build such a solid relationship with these people, in a caring family atmosphere, and they will share things.

‘Support staff are very much a part of the team. If I have any announcements, I make sure they are a part of this – they come to the regular meetings. It means we’re all on board the waka, paddling in the same direction.’

Professional development too is encouraged – support staff regularly attend training, and the board of trustees is subsidising the fees of one member who’s studying for a teacher’s aide certificate. ‘There’s got to be benefit for us in that.’

Check your step

Like many support staff, those at Waitara Central discovered they weren’t on the right pay grade or step. Some hadn’t gone up a step in years, although under the collective agreement they were entitled to a small annual pay increase. Some should have been on a higher paying grade because of how they were working with children scale.

Make sure you’re on the right grade – see ‘A question of grading’, a guide for members published near the end of the Support Staff page on NZEI’s website, or call the NZEI call centre on 0800 693 443.

For the love or the money?

Amiria Tihema works two jobs at her children’s Christchurch kura. In school time, she runs a library and a canteen, works with individual children, fills in for admin, and prepares resources for learning. After school, she cleans.

Guess which job pays the most? It’s cleaning toilets – such is the state of pay for support staff in New Zealand schools. Working with children pays $12.94 for 15 hours a week, but only during term time; cleaning pays $14.65 for 20 hours, 52 weeks a year.

Amiria says she would like to quit the cleaning job, ‘I feel sorry for my three kids [who have to wait around after school while she works], but it pays the rent and basic costs – and there’s pay in the holidays.

‘As it is I have to find jobs in the breaks just to survive – you can’t go on a benefit because of stand downs, by the time that’s gone you’re back to school.’

She loves the library work, and wants more professional development. ‘I actually volunteered for a year before I got the job – I taught myself because we had the library at the school but no one to get it up and running.

‘But I’m at a point where someone else needs to upskill me – there’s only so much you can teach yourself. Especially for the kids’ when they’re researching their mahi - I know how to look up the Dewey system to see if there’s book, but I know there’s a lot more you can do on the computer. We have two nice computers but we don’t have the securities in place to let the kids use them.’