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14
Jul
'Staff are crying in class and taking time off for stress’: The Harrogate school on strike
Staff at a special school in Harrogate have gone on strike over unsafe working conditions and concerns over staff wellbeing.
Springwater School in Starbeck is mostly closed for four days this week, from Monday, July 13 to Thursday, July 16, with teachers and support staff picketing the school.
The school is a special school for children and young people aged two to 19. Pupils have profound and multiple learning difficulties, severe learning difficulties and physical difficulties.
The Stray Ferret visited the picket line this morning to find out more about why they are striking.
‘Last week the roof came in’
Gary McVeigh-Kaye, North Yorkshire branch secretary of the National Education Union, was with the strikers.
He said:
Initially there were two strands of concern around safety – one about the physical conditions of the buildings, and the other about the wellbeing of staff, their physical and emotional safety.
The old section of the building was literally crumbling apart, so they moved to this new building section last summer with more modern classrooms, but this building is now starting to have some problems. For example, there was a leak just last week and part of the roof came in.
Staff said 'our signs say it all'.
The trust has worked with the union to put in place a plan for how the building is going to be made safer, so this area of concern is felt to be resolved.
‘There’s a lot of physical injury here’
The other major issue, which hasn’t been resolved and is the reason for the strike, is teacher wellbeing, said Mr McVeigh-Kaye, who added:
There have been a number of teaching staff who have had absences, often stress-related absences, and they’ve often not been covered by qualified staff. They ask support staff to cover in the role of teacher. We absolutely value our support staff, they do a vital role, but they would be the first to say that they’re not teachers and they shouldn’t have that pressure put on them. So that’s adding stress to the support staff.
The staff are amazing here, but when they’re feeling that either they’ve got to be off work because of stress or they’re in work and they’re in tears it’s really difficult. There’s a lot of physical injury here. It’s not the fault of the pupils, they get dysregulated and often they’re not aware of what they’re doing, but staff do get injured.
An attempt at a solution has been made: a system is in place where if staff are emotionally or physically injured they can make a call to the office, and someone will immediately come and give them time out of class to recover.
However, Mr McVeigh-Kaye said this doesn’t always get done.
‘We can’t have staff welfare overlooked’
The union has held talks with Ascent Academies Trust, which runs the school. The latest meeting took place last week, but the trust "weren’t getting" the welfare concerns, leading to members overwhelmingly deciding to take action, said Mr McVeigh-Kaye. He said:
We can’t have staff welfare so overlooked, it’s got to be at the core of what happens in this school. The staff stand together, and if the staff are happy it creates happy learning environments for the pupils.
We want swifter recruitment if staff leave, we want qualified teachers in every classroom at all times, and we want our support staff to be able to do the job they’re brilliant at doing, which is supporting the pupil and the teachers. Once we have that in place there’ll be no more strike action.
Car horns continually honked in support of the strike.
The union has a mandate to strike until October, so further strikes are possible after the summer holidays.
Ascent Academies Trust chief executive Rachel Hargreaves criticised the NEU for calling the strike after "constructive talks" had made "progress".
Ms Hargreaves said:
Strikes disrupt family life, children’s learning and routine, and Ascent Academies’ Trust is disappointed that the NEU has decided to take this course of action when constructive talks between the trust and union representatives have been underway.
The trust is fully committed to ensuring all our children, young people and colleagues have the best environments to learn and work in. We had hoped the NEU would want to show they are keen to find a solution by pausing all strikes while we finish our planned discussions and allowed actions to take place.
Individual members of staff declined to speak to The Stray Ferret about their experiences, but one simply said: "Our signs say it all."
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