Strike action on the ballot at Harris Federation primary, controversially academised last term

Former Byron Court primary in north London holding vote.

Teachers at a school which was controversially handed to England’s second-largest academy trust last term are being balloted on strike action, after what their union says is a worsening of their working conditions since the takeover.

An indicative ballot is currently taking place at Harris Primary Academy South Kenton – the name given to the former Byron Court primary school in Brent, north London, by the Harris Federation. Harris has been running the school since the start of September.

The possibility of strike action comes on top of a much larger looming dispute, which is currently seeing staff at 18 Harris secondaries and sixth forms balloted. Harris does not respond to requests for comment from this website.

 

The detail on Byron Court

 

As Education Uncovered reported at the time, the newly-elected Labour government decided to press ahead with plans, which had been initiated by the Conservative government before the election, for Byron Court to transfer to Harris after it failed an Ofsted inspection last November.

The school's academisation had come in the face of a sustained local campaign against the move, with more than 2,000 people having signed a petition against it. National Education Union members also staged strike action before Byron Court was transferred to Harris.

Now the NEU is holding a ballot on new strikes. On the ballot, it told me, were “unacceptable workload; excessive monitoring practices; breaches of the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document; excessive cover requirements for higher level teaching assistants; and threats to NEU facility time for NEU reps”.

The NEU said that 80 per cent of its members in the school had taken part in an indicative ballot on strike action, with all of them then voting in favour of moving to a formal ballot, which is now taking place.

Harris’s demands on staff are said by the union to have been intense, as the south London-based federation imposes new procedures stemming from its centrally-designed school improvement model.

In October, Education Uncovered reported that teachers were complaining of a “pressure cooker” atmosphere of “constant” lesson observationsa at the newly-academised school.

The union said these had been continuing in recent months, with centrally-appointed Harris “consultants” continuing to visit classrooms.

The union also told me: “It’s Harris, and they want everything done the Harris way. Every single curriculum is changed. Every subject area is taught in a completely different way, with a completely different curriculum from what was there before, even though, during the time that Byron Court was on its improvement drive [after the Ofsted inspection, but pre-Harris], people had developed a quite good curriculum, which had only just gone into operation. That’s all been trashed.

“And obviously, for a class teacher who teaches across all the subjects, for the curriculum to suddenly change, that’s a load of extra work. They’re unfamiliar with it, they’ll have to have consultants in re-checking that they’ve done their homework properly.”

There had been progress on some aspects of conditions, the union said. Repeated lesson observations with teachers being graded afterwards had been dropped after the union raised it with management, it said. However, many issues remained.

Although Harris, as an academy trust, does not have to follow the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) for teachers appointed since the takeover on its own contracts, it does have to do so on those who transferred employment under “TUPE,” on non-academy contracts.

The union has argued that Harris has scheduled meetings during their members’ planning, preparation and assessment time, and that teachers were facing more than the STPCD’s limit of 1,265 hours a year. The union is also in dispute with the trust over the implementation of performance related pay.

The aspect of the ballot about union facilities time, the union said, related to the fact that the NEU’s rep in the school also “has a Brent NEU elected role” for schools more widely within the borough, and used to have one day a week’s “facilities time” – time off their teaching duties – for this role. However, Harris, I was told, has given notice that this will cease from the end of the term.

Harris drew media attention two weeks ago, after its chief executive Sir Daniel Moynihan was revealed in its annual accounts to be the first school leader in England to be paid more than £500,000.

Jenny Cooper, the NEU’s joint secretary for Brent who also sits on the union’s national executive, said: “This school cannot operate without our members – they are the frontline workforce behind a company that generates half a million a year for its CEO. The staff remain steadfast in their determination to exercise their rights despite attempted interference in our union processes by the federation. The NEU remains willing to meet with the school to resolve this dispute in which case the ballot will be suspended; however, they will need to be prepared to make some changes.”

The NEU’s ballot of members in the 18 Harris secondary schools and sixth forms finishes on February 28th, as does that at Harris Primary Academy South Kenton. Results in both of these disputes will be interesting to watch.