passport - National Union of Teachers

31About the NUTYour payThe NUT argues that academies should notoperate outside the system of national payand conditions for school teachers. They canset their own levels of pay for staff who havenot transferred to the academy. There is norequirement for an academy to implementnational pay awards for new staff, and longercontracted working hours for new starters maymean your hourly pay is less than in a localauthority school.In FE, colleges became independent from localauthorities in the 1990s in a process similar tothe academies process for outstanding schools.Lecturers have seen their profession becomecasualised, and their pay levels fall further andfurther behind school teachers.Your employment termsand conditionsAcademies can set their own rules regardingworking duties, days and hours, breaks,holidays, sick leave, maternity/paternity leaveand so on for staff who are new to an academy.In many academies a significant worsening ofconditions has already been imposed on newstaff. For example:• Absence of any limits on working time –The ARK academies chain has nocontractual limit of any kind on working timein its academies.• Changes to conditions of service - Someacademies, such as those operated by theThomas Telford group require 1,500 hoursor more of directed working time. A numberof academies in some multi-academy chainsuse informal ‘learning walks’ as a means ofteacher observation.• Pay - The Labour Research Departmentcarried out a survey on pay for senior staff inboth individual stand-alone academies andacademy chains which was published inApril 2011. The LRD found that pay for seniorstaff in academies was outpacing that of theircounterparts in local authority maintainedschools. The flexibility academies have on payhas been used to benefit a small number ofsenior staff instead of benefiting all employees.For more information on why the NUT remainsopposed in principle to the academiesprogramme go to:www.teachers.org.uk/academies