“Like nothing I’ve seen in decades” Unions lift the lid on Harris redundancy plans

Education Uncovered sets out the detail and controversy around plans by England's second-largest academy chain to cut more than 40 frontline jobs.

 

More than 100 employees of England’s second-largest academy chain took part in redundancy meetings this week, as the Harris Federation launched what unions are describing as the biggest job-cutting exercise of its kind that they can remember.

The move by the south-London based trust to cut jobs without any federation-wide consultation with unions, with no detailed business case and with Harris’s uniquely well-remunerated central senior management team seemingly excluded from any redundancies, has provoked gasps this week.

One union official said the move, which is set to see more than 40 Harris school-level staff lose their jobs in a fast-track process concluding by the end of this month, was the largest set of redundancies they had seen in 30 years’ union work in education.

Here, in this exclusive look at the detail of the proposals, Education Uncovered can reveal:

-The detail of which schools the job losses are set to affect;

-The fact that a Harris secondary which only last week achieved the first “outstanding” Ofsted verdict in its history received notice, on the day the inspection result was announced, that at least eight of its teachers would be made redundant: the highest number across the federation;

-The fact that the cutbacks appear to be occurring uniquely among Harris secondaries, sixth forms and alternative provision, even though Harris’s justification for them involves pressures on budgets which affect all its schools, including primaries;

-Fears that overseas-trained teachers, some of whom were brought to England only recently by Harris to address recruitment shortages, will be the focus of a large proportion of redundancies at a secondary where 25 staff have faced redundancy meetings;

-Information from a union that staff who are on maternity leave, and who are pregnant, are among those at risk of redundancy, as, it said, are at least two workplace union representatives.

The Harris Federation, which is arguing for the frontline cuts on the basis of an “unfunded” teacher pay award by the government, rising national insurance costs and falling rolls at its schools and others across London, does not speak to Education Uncovered.