PROFILE: SCHOOL SECRETARIES AND CARETAKERS:School secretaries and caretakers are among the most poorly paid across the education sector, with many earning less than €15,000 per year. They face a 5 per cent pay cut next month
AS IF to make sure that the lowest paid in education don’t escape the race to the bottom on salaries, the Department of Education has ordered pay cuts for ancillary staff in schools. These include secretaries, caretakers and cleaners. For the lowest-paid workers – nearly all earning less than €30,000 per year with most on less than half of that – the new move will mean a 5 per cent cut in earnings. The reductions will apply to all allowances, including overtime. The cut will be imposed except where it reduces pay rates below the minimum wage, which itself is being cut to €7.65 per hour.
Nearly all school staff apart from teachers are direct employees of the board of management. They are paid by the board from grants linked to pupil enrolment given to the school by the Department every year.
The level of the grant gives an indication of how these workers are paid. The Department pays €155 per child to each school to allow them to employ a secretary or caretaker. Simple maths shows that a 100-pupil school (almost half of the primary schools in the country fit this category) can pay a secretary and caretaker €7,250 each per year. Not all of this goes to the workers, as employer contributions to PRSI, for example, have to be found from it. This is the type of annual wage which proves that many are genuinely better off on the dole.
This scheme is in complete contrast to one that existed before 1990 in very large schools where caretakers and secretaries were paid by the State. Then they had proper holiday entitlements, an incremental wage scale and a pension scheme. But in a previous public service jobs embargo, the State simply stopped hiring these workers. Later, a grant scheme to allow school boards to hire caretakers and secretaries directly was introduced.
Over the past decade, there has been some increase in the grant paid to schools but not enough to meet the cost of national wage agreements. As a result, many schools have to fundraise to make sure that they can even pay the minimum wage. Now the lowest-paid in most schools are about to find themselves slipping even further down the ladder.
In researching this article, it proved very difficult to find workers from this sector who were willing to be identified. Since they are paid directly by schools, many were unwilling to talk openly about their situation.
Josephine Daly from Cork was willing to talk about conditions in the sector generally, but preferred her own school was not identified.
“I’ve worked as a secretary for 10 years – I was in a travel agency before – and have a new principal who fought for proper wages for me this September, so I’m one of the lucky ones, but the average for many secretaries is €10 per hour.
“The majority of secretaries I know are on minimum wage, or have been at the same rate for the last 10 years. You’re not entitled to the pay increases or anything. In the good times, the public servants got benchmarking increments, everything, but we didn’t get anything. Now, when times are bad, we’re told they need to decrease our wages.
“Some colleagues have to go directly to the board to get their wages,” says Daly. “They often have to deal with people who have no clue about living costs, people who will even question why someone is being paid €10 per hour. You have situations where school secretaries have been with the same school for 20 years and yet they have no mechanism for a pay increase or even sick leave.”
A key problem, she says, is the perception that secretaries and other non-teaching staff have it easy. The work of any school secretary can be satisfying but also demanding and exhausting.
“In the morning you could find yourself meeting parents and dealing with any problems they may have with the children. You take phone calls. If someone’s off sick you might have to find out if there’s a sub teacher available. Invariably, you will be texting parents. Many secretaries are involved in technical support and organise online content; most do all the printing and photocopying in the school. No two days are the same.
“Most companies would outsource a great deal of the work we do, like designing and printing booklets and certificates. Schools can’t do this; we do all of it.”
In rural areas especially, the workload can come from outside the school gates. “You’re classed as a community secretary, so you could be doing secretarial work for the priest, the diocese and the community hall as well. That’s the way it is in all the rural areas.”
In an irony which must be jarring in the present situation, many secretaries also manage school finances.
“Frequently, it’s the secretaries who handle the school accounts. Indeed, many roles which were previously done by teachers have now landed on the secretary’s desk.”
Daly says she has few complaints in her own school but she has sympathy for many colleagues who are taken for granted. Having the support of management is crucial; since most schools have only one caretaker and secretary, it’s easy to become isolated.
“We’re on our own in the school,” says Daly. “In some schools there might be two SNA’s (special needs assistants), so they have each other, but we literally haven’t anything.”
A further complication for secretaries and caretakers is making ends meet on their salaries. Most are paid for about 40 weeks of the year. Many must resort to part-time and evening work in order to keep a roof over their heads.
“You couldn’t survive on a secretary’s wages on their own,” says Daly. “Everybody I know has a separate job. I know a girl who works in the credit union; I work in a bar at night to supplement my wages. I can’t afford to live just by my secretarial wages. We don’t get paid for the summer or at the Christmas or Easter holidays: we have to sign on. We’re at the bottom of the ladder.”
Pay cuts: the details
What’s happening?
According to a Department of Education circular, all staff employed by a recognised school or VEC come within the definition of “public servant” for the purposes of the pay cut.
This covers up to 17,000 low-paid non-teaching staff in schools. There will be a 5 per cent cut for the first €30,000 in pay. Cuts also apply to fixed allowances, overtime, shift payments and call-out payments.
The Minister for Finance has directed employees should be exempt from the reduction where it would bring them below the statutory minimum wage.
What jobs are affected by these cuts?
School secretaries, caretakers, cleaners and administrative staff; school completion programme staff; school transport bus escorts; tutors (literacy service, community and adult education etc); non-teaching staff in Youth Encounter Projects (YEPs); teachers employed in Traveller pre-schools; any other staff employed directly by a recognised school or VEC.
How are these staff members paid?
Those hired prior to 1990 are paid directly by the Department and have all the rights and benefits of other civil servants. Caretakers and secretaries hired after 1990 are employed by the school or by a board of management.
While schools officially pay wages, the Department (via a grant) funds their salaries indirectly. The distribution of those monies is at the discretion of each school’s board of management.
Can schools refuse to implement the cuts?
The Department circular suggests they do not have this option. But trade unions representing the workers – Impact and Siptu – are exploring their legal options.
Seán Cottrell of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) believes the situation is bizarre. “The Department deliberately shifted caretakers and secretaries out of the payroll. All the other roles are paid by the State. Technically they’re paid by the school, but the reality is almost every school I know fundraises to top up the Department’s ancillary grant because it’s not enough to pay them.”
The IPPN’s policy remains “that the Department of Education should employ and pay ancillary staff on the same basis as they are employed in many other public service organisations”.
