Letter to Parents and Carers: Industrial Action

Dear parents and carers,

We are writing to you to provide an update on the negotiations that have been taking place with the two teaching trade unions (NASUWT and NEU) regarding the extension of the school day.  

As you know, there was industrial action last week which affected 14 of our academies, including Shafton, with further strikes happening this week. This all causes serious disruption to students’ schooling so we have been working extremely hard to reach agreement with the trade unions while still taking forward our proposal to bring the school day into the expected minimum of 32.5 hours per week so that we can further improve the high-quality education our students deserve.

On Friday, we put a revised formal proposal to both trade unions that made a significant change to our previously proposed model.  In summary, this reduced the Tutor/Personal Development session from 45 minutes to 35 minutes, with at least five minutes of this dedicated to registration and tutor check in.  We have then added 10 minutes to morning break, increasing this from 15 minutes to 25 minutes.  This is in direct response to feedback we have had, and is in addition to previous changes we have agreed to.  We know from the ongoing discussions and responses, that increased social time during the school day is important to students and parents/carers.

During further negotiations held on Monday, we agreed two further concessions: the first was to formally acknowledge that the first five minutes of the 35 minute tutor/personal development session will be for the registration of students and the second linked to further reductions in after-school meeting time.  Both of these were at the request of the trade unions and in meeting both of these we were expecting at least a pause in strike action.

Given this, it is disappointing that the trade unions confirmed that this week’s strike action would still go ahead. We have formally requested that discussions continue with urgency so that this is not the case, resulting in no further disruption to the education of more than 10,000 students currently affected by these strikes.

We hope that you agree this is a meaningful and significant change and demonstrates that we are listening to the voice of our staff, minimising unnecessary workload, whilst still prioritising the quality of education that your children receive.

We will let you know as soon as we have any further updates for you.

Yours faithfully

Lee Wilson                             Alison McQueen

Chief Executive Officer           Principal

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