Responding to Cabinet Secretary Kirsty Williams AM’s statement today on how school supply staff will be managed in future, Jess Turner, UNISON Cymru organiser for schools said,
“We believe that support staff make up to half of the supply workforce and they will feel the taskforce has completely ignored them with this announcement. To not be mentioned at all is a glaring omission which shows that despite the professional registration of teaching assistants and the crucial role all support staff play, they are again an afterthought in the education system.
“The task was to evaluate how the provision of supply staff to schools could be better managed in future and this report has failed to properly answer that question.
“This report goes against the spirit of social partnership. Even though UNISON was asked to meet with the taskforce to discuss this, there is no mention of a single one of the recommendations we made.”