Where to for support staff?

Something doesn’t add up in our schools when it comes to support staff. Penny Harding investigates.

Schools are employing more support staff, expecting more from them and the rhetoric is all about the valuable team role these staff play in delivering quality education.
But on the job, it can be hard to feel valued. Many support staff are employed only on a casual, term-time basis – and only if there’s enough money in the kitty. The pay is low and there is no consistency in training or professional development, and few job descriptions.
More than 21,000 support staff work in our state and integrated schools – mainly administrative staff and teacher aides – and their numbers grew by 26.5 percent between 1999 and 2009. In 2009, they cost $400 million.
But unlike teachers, their wages are not centrally funded and their employment is under the control of schools. That’s good news if the school favours a team approach and values the input of a variety of people – like New Plymouth Girls High School.

Core staff

At New Plymouth Girls High support staff are integrated into a multidisciplinary team. Principal Jenny Ellis favours an inclusive approach. One of the first things she did after being appointed in 2005 was to knock a hole in the wall from her office to the corridor. When her door is open, then she is available to talk. Previously the only route to the principal’s office was through the PA’s office.
New Plymouth Girls High has 1250 students (140 boarders) and 160 staff. Ninety of the staff are teachers and 70 work in support roles. They include administration staff, teacher aides, a full time IT network role, security guard, a science technician, nurse and boarding hostel staff. The school has a business manager, whose job is to oversee all support staff.
“One of the keys is having those relationships built up with core staff,” Jenny says. “It’s also about valuing staff – and I think that that often doesn’t come through in all schools,” she says.
Weekly professional development sessions are open to everyone and Jenny says this benefits the individual and also supports the school’s strategic goals.
And if the teacher aides who work in the school’s two special needs units are away from school, then relief staff are brought in.
Waimarie, one of the school’s learning support units, teaches 10 students with very high needs. Five students are secondary school-age and five are adult students; most are in wheelchairs. Coordinator and teacher Sandra Morris works with a team of six staff – one fulltime assistant employed at grade C and five permanent part-time staff. There are no casual staff and no one is employed on an A grade.

Training

Sandra, who has been teaching at Waimarie for 15 years, says teaching in a learning support unit is complex and demanding work that requires specialised skills and knowledge. “Only one of the 10 students in here has any language.” Much of the curriculum is based on Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, and the learning programme is sensory-based, using light, sound, music and movement.
 At Waimarie, one hour every fortnight is devoted to professional development for the teacher aides – on issues directly related to the students they are working with. It includes training in assessment systems, communication and teaching strategies.

Sandra says she initially questioned whether she was using those hours to the best advantage. “After doing it, I am convinced it’s a very wise investment.”

“Staff can share what is happening in their lessons, pool ideas and brainstorm teaching strategies. These times have definitely been of great benefit to our students.

“It is support staff who are the key to a successfully running unit,” she says. “I may have the best teaching programmes in place, but if the support staff have not been empowered and trained to deliver those programmes, learning may not occur.”

Noeline Vickers, a teacher aide at Waimarie for three years, came to the unit after working with a boy at a kindergarten. She’s done three external training courses, covering autism, student safety and vision. “But it’s not an outside qualification. I would like to do some sort of teacher-aide qualification.”

Waimarie teacher assistant Monique Jansonius says the courses available for teacher aides are variable, ranging from an extramural course at Massey University to shorter courses by other education providers. “So where is the standard?”

Passionate

That is a view echoed by Gaye Parlane, acting executive officer at Papanui High School in Christchurch.
“There is no formal qualification. We need something standardised throughout New Zealand that makes us more professional. I would like to see that for office staff as well.”

Gaye started her 21-year support staff career as a “tea lady” at Mairehau High School in Christchurch. “When I had young children that suited me.” From there she went to work in the school office and finally became bursar before being offered a job as office manager at Papanui in 1996. She is now responsible for the school’s finance, property and payroll.

An NZEI rep, Gaye has represented support staff at national level for the past two years. “I am very passionate about the work that support staff do. They used to be mother helpers and now they are professional people in their own right.”

But she says a teacher aide position is often 27.5 hours a week – “class hours” – and term-time only. “The top range for a teacher aide is $22 an hour and that is for a C grade, and there aren’t many of them. Most of our teacher aides range from $14 to $18.”

Losing staff

Gaye says schools lose people because of the poor pay. “There are some that go because they know that their son, who is working at McDonalds, is earning more than them.” But she knows one teacher aide who works another job at the weekends to earn enough to keep doing the job she loves. “She runs the classroom where children have been withdrawn from class – she works two jobs so she can stay in the job.”

While other people look forward to the school summer holidays, the end of the year is a tough time for support staff because that is when the budgets are set for the following year. Gaye says if there is a deficit in the operational budget, then schools will try to make savings on support staff.
“One of things I would like to achieve while I am working for support staff is to try and get out of that operational funding.”

NZEI has been working with the Ministry of Education on a Support Staff Workforce Strategy, see pXX. Bargaining for a new collective agreement will also begin this term. Follow developments on www.fairdeal.org.nz – and get involved!

Special education review sees little change

Despite the release in October 2010 of the Government’s four-year plan for special education, it is not clear how much support staff will see in the way of system changes.
Brian Coffey, strategic policy manager of special education at the Ministry of Education, says central funding for teacher aides has been proposed from time to time but that would be difficult because of the variability of hours. “Doing that centrally would be a nightmare; it would add a lot to the costs.”
He understands the desire for greater professional recognition and agrees that there is not a lot of training on offer outside the schools. But he says professional development is the most powerful learning “within the school and within the team”.

“If you start to put too much emphasis on the teacher aide you start to get the programme led by the teacher aide. That is the downside. That is where the literature says it doesn’t work for kids.”
Brian says where the job of teacher aide works well is where they work as part of a team, led by the teacher, and their role is well understood.

He says, “The career path is not through the teacher aide path. My advice for the teacher aide is to really look at teacher training. A good teacher aide going into a teaching career – that is a fantastic background and context to take into teaching.”