Head teachers are planning to make large-scale redundancies
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- Category: Education News
Head teachers are planning to make large-scale redundancies, the Association of School and College Leaders has warned.
A dozen schools a day are calling the association's helpline to ask for advice on redundancies, as schools face a squeeze on their budgets.
It claims the new English Baccalaureate means many schools are scaling down on staff who teach vocational courses.
Head teachers are planning to make large-scale redundancies, the Association of School and College Leaders has warned.
A dozen schools a day are calling the association's helpline to ask for advice on redundancies, as schools face a squeeze on their budgets.
It claims the new English Baccalaureate means many schools are scaling down on staff who teach vocational courses.
The ASCL is offering training to head teachers faced with shedding staff.
A seminar - Managing staffing reductions - at the ASCL's annual conference in Manchester at the weekend was attended by some 60 delegates.
Richard Bird, ASCL's legal specialist, said: "The last time we've had to do this sort of thing was when Kenneth Clarke was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1990s.
"Most heads have never had to face a redundancy situation. 'Do you know where your redundancy policy is?' we're asking them."
Mr Bird warned that many schools had a redundancy policy that related only to teachers, not to support staff.
He said many heads were not prepared for the "rougher negotiations" of some of the non-teaching unions.
Also, some schools were not clear whether they were covered by the local authority's redundancy policy or needed their own.
ASCL general secretary Brian Lightman said: "It's an unprecedented time for them [head teachers] and we've seen a massive demand for advice on how to deal with it.
"And of course our members are very vulnerable too because they're more expensive, if they're deputy or assistant heads and so on."
Read more about this at the BBC website.
