Harris Federation teachers speak of being at “breaking point” over workload

Teachers working for schools within England’s second-largest academy trust are at “breaking point” over workload, one of them warned as a collective letter from more than 1,000 staff members was presented at the chain’s headquarters.

One of two teachers to speak on behalf of the signatories said that many colleagues were “often working 12-hour days” at school, and that “many have said [that] workload is unmanageable alongside family life”.

Teachers were living in “constant fear of support plans and additional work being piled on if all their students don’t make ‘average progress,’” this teacher warned.

Another teacher, speaking as National Education Union reps from Harris secondary schools and sixth forms gathered to present the letter, told me that its academies were not getting the funding they needed for the pastoral and behavioural support for the often disadvantaged pupils that they educated.

The detail

Education Uncovered reported on Friday that the collective letter had been signed as NEU members seek to put pressure on Harris, which controls 55 schools in and around London, to improve their pay and conditions.

Members are calling on Harris to increase and protect the amount of Planning, Preparation and Assessment time teachers receive; ensure that teachers do not work beyond the 1,265 hours a year of “directed time” which features in the national contract; ensure automatic pay progression for teachers; and paying all support and teaching staff a salary at least in line with the inner-London living wage of £23,300.

A cold, grey Friday afternoon saw the reps delivering the letter with its signatures to Harris’s headquarters in an office block in Croydon, south London. Short speeches followed, including from a rep who offered insights into the pressures on staff.

She said: “I work alongside some of the most hardworking and professional people I have ever met. For these already hardworking individuals, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide the quality of education the students in their schools deserve.

“It’s not just the odd one or two people in schools that feel as though things need to change. Over 1,000 Harris staff members have signed this letter to demonstrate our collective strength of feeling that we need more support from Harris to improve our lives at work, for the benefit of students and staff…

“I would like to share with you some real stories from staff that will highlight our day-to-day realities at school and the considerable impact Harris could have if they agreed to our demands.

“Educators have told us that if their workload was reduced, they would be less stressed and more able to spend quality time with their own children. Many have said workload is unmanageable alongside family life.

“We have heard again and again how workload has impacted educators’ physical health, mental health, and personal relationships. Many are at breaking point and feel they are giving 100 per cent but it’s never enough.

“Some educators have told us that a workload reduction would mean they could become better teachers, others have told us it would stop them from having to leave the profession.

“We are told that educators love this job but can’t handle the impact it has on the rest of their lives.”

The teacher cited a survey of more than 500 Harris staff last year. This had found that they were working 53 hours a week on average during term-time, compared to a national average figure for full-time workers across the UK of 36.6 hours.

The teacher added: “Many Harris teachers are often working 12-hour days at school, or regularly taking work home and working late at night or during the weekend…We know of staff getting repeated prescriptions for medications to help with mental health struggles mainly attributed to their work stress.

“Amongst colleagues, there is constant fear of support plans and additional work being piled on if all their students don’t make ‘average progress’.

“Personally, it’s so hard to see my amazing colleagues becoming increasingly deflated, exhausted and over-stretched. The things we are asking for would mean a huge positive change for these staff and ones to come. Harris have the power to implement these demands and really show staff their compassion extends to them also.”

The other NEU rep to speak at this gathering told me that he and his colleagues were highly committed to the pupils they served, with Harris’s schools often having “high percentages of pupil premium, high levels of social deprivation”.

But this could create high pressures on them-and the working demands were becoming too much.

He said: “There’s a lot of pastoral work that needs to be done, there are lots of very important interventions that happen with the kids, but the workload is too great…

“People are being signed off work through sickness because they have worked themselves into the ground, working 12, 13 hours a day, then one or even two days at the weekend. People are driving themselves into sickness, because the staffing is not there.”

I asked this teacher what the situation was in terms of staff shortages. He replied that, in the department which he leads, he did not have any full-time teachers who were fully qualified. Recruitment and retention pressures were intense, he suggested.

Pay progression

He said Harris needed to follow through on the letter’s demand for automatic progression up the pay spine for all staff, unless they faced serious capability or misconduct proceedings. This, he said, happened routinely elsewhere and often happened within Harris schools, but was not being made to happen in all schools and could be intensely upsetting for colleagues not progressing.

The NEU obtained data from Harris last year showing that only 72 per cent of those eligible for progress on the main teaching scale actually progressed, while the figure for the upper scale – for more experienced teachers – was only 30 per cent. Harris has now said that, in order to progress, “pupil progress must at least be in line with national standards,” the union has warned.

This teacher said that automatic pay progress “is a thing Harrs can do tomorrow. Sir Dan Moynihan [Harris’s chief executive] could just say tomorrow we are going to do pay progression [across the board]. Lots of schools do that already”.

The third Harris teacher I spoke to at this gathering of reps said the trust had to find a way of funding more support for pupils, which in turn would make life less demanding for teachers. As it was, the workload was huge, especially for the relatively modest remuneration offered to teachers.

She said: “I have worked in education for four years, having come from a commercial background, and I have never worked so hard, for so little pay.”

This teacher also said the trust was not finding enough resources to provide support in the classroom, despite having reserves of cash – it posted an accumulated reserve figure of £33 million in accounts published last month – and by far the best-paid executives of any large trust in England, led by Sir Dan Moynihan on approaching £500,000 a year in salary alone.

She said: “We know that the students need lots of pastoral care, but there’s not the funding for that. We need better support for teachers, but there’s not the funding for that. We need better outreach, but there’s no support for that. It’s the lack of funds, but then we hear about the profit* [that the trust is making].”

She added: “We have a lot of physical violence in the school, and we need a lot of pastoral support to help with the behaviour management. I do not think that we have got it.”

Harris may be unusual among larger academy trusts in having something of a reputation, on the ground, for giving its principals some freedom in terms of how the schools operate, meaning its policies are not always the same in different academies. This teacher said that the federation had different approaches to behaviour management in different academies, and was of the view that they could do with being standardised, to implement the approach which had been found to work best.

Teachers recruited from overseas

Finally, this teacher highlighted a situation which was also mentioned to me by union officials last week. This is that members whom Harris has recruited from overseas – with Jamaica being a well-known recruiting ground for the federation - can face salaries as much as £10,000 a year below those of other teachers doing the same job, because they lack Qualified Teacher Status.

This teacher said: “How they [Harris] treat teachers coming from the Caribbean is just staggering. They are doing a good job, but they are being paid much less, for doing the exact same job as the rest of us.

“They have had to make a huge cultural shift, in coming here, and they are not being supported properly.”

Harris has long been known for working its teachers hard, with professionals under great pressure to put in long hours in the expectation that the pupils they serve will benefit. But this campaign is now bringing many staff’s concerns about that approach out into the open.

Harris generally does not respond to requests for comment from Education Uncovered, and did not so when I sought a response to this campaign last week.

On Friday, its management were not available at headquarters to take receipt of the collective letter, meaning it had to be left with an administrative support member.

Union negotiators are due to hold a regular meeting with the federation next week. It will be very interesting to see how this develops.

*All academy trusts, including Harris, are not-for-profit. The comment could apply to the trust having reserves.