I work at a school as a SEN TA with all the bad lads. I get paid salary which includes school holidays. To save money they’ve decided to rename my job with same description and pay me term time only. So a 3/4K cut. I’m assuming this is all above board and watertight?

Are you in a union? If so speak to them.

Depends on your contract. Full time permanent (I doubt) or rolling short term contract ?

Good luck

I’m assuming this is all above board and watertight?

Course it isn’t. It’s most likely imposing a significant change in your contract of employment.

I’d be interested to see where they are expecting you to take your holiday entitlement, too.

Their copy of my contract has magically vanished. Need to root mine out

My holiday i assume during school holidays.

Got a meeting in 5 to get new proposed contract

If you only work term time, you’ll accrue leave while working. Surely you can only take that holiday during work time.

The reasonsing behind this is lack of students. I asked if we would be reverting to original hours if student numbers went up. The head laughed. I’ll take that as a no.

The reasonsing behind this is lack of students

Makes sense that they want to cut your hours then. Oh.

Sounds iffy.. Give acas a call they’ll be able to offer advice.
As for holiday, I imagine it’ll be pro-rata to reflect the lower hours, so you might only get ten a year or something.. But you’d have to take it in term time I imagine, otherwise it’d be like me booking a holiday on a Saturday when I’m not at work.. Sound like a bit of a stich up..

The head laughed at you whilst slashing your wage and hours.. Nice management there.

All the other term time onlyers don’t get holiday during term time. So I assume not.

Sounds like they’re trying to have their cake and eat it. Either you’re paid term time only and so is your holiday, or you’re paid year round and so is your holiday. Or are they giving you fewers hours (and pay) 12 months of the year?

Give ACAS a call. They quite possibly have two routes to get this in place:

1 – you agree
2 – they make your old role redundant

Don’t let them push you over…

From their point of view, the holidays alone could screw them if they do it right (which they will probably not do).

Sounds a mess – do they want to employ you as a contractor then ? In that case you won’t get paid holidays, but your daily rate should reflect that e.g. it is included in what they pay you, if that makes sense.

OP you need to find your contract, its very possibly this is all entirely legit or it may not be (without consultation/compensation etc)

TTO jobs are such a scam. I’m one of a small handful of full timers at my school, all other support staff are TTO. You have my sympathy. I suspect if there’s a business need (fewer students) they can propose changes. However if you don’t want to accept them does that effectively make you redundant, I don’t know. I hope acas have some answers for you.

Sounds like redundancy to me

Sounds like redundancy to me

Sounds like constructive dismissal to me.

It’s nothing new, my mum does the same job and had these conditions imposed a few years ago. Nothing she or the union could do (or rather nothing she could do, and the union was useless).

https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2013/06/Research-MaterialTerm-time-working3.pdf

The overall students may be getting less, but the lovely little so and so’s I teach are up to over 20. So thats the worst kids in the school, ones that would be kicked out if it didnt cost £16k per student and theres going to be 3 of us full time from an original team of 6.