Hampshire County Council
Hampshire Schools Forum / Item 5
8 July 2015
Facilities Agreement Report
Report by E.Muir - Hon Sec TLP

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  1. Firstly, members of TLP (Teachers’ Liaison panel) would like to thank the members of Schools Forum for the decision that they took in May 2014 to support the Trade Union and Public Duties procedures.
  2. TLP has had a very successful year. We have filled all our seats on the panel. Members represent all phases of Education in Hampshire – Special, Primary and Secondary, with members being teachers and Head teachers. The most difficult positions to recruit members to is the County Secretary group. Whilst they form part of TLP, they are also the members whom we rely on to provide guidance from their individual Unions on Policy and Procedure. There have been a number of personal difficulties with this group this year, but we hope that these have now been resolved going forward into next year. The gaps on CSWP this year have meant that one secretary in particular has taken on the lion share of attending meetings with me as TLP Secretary. I would like to publicly record my thanks to Belinda Davis (NUT Secretary) for her support this year at meetings.
  3. As part of our role in looking for efficiencies, we have looked at our patterns of meetings across the Academic year and we have consolidated them to minimise disruption in schools. The bulk of the meeting load – as would be expected – falls to the TLP Secretary. The 0.8 Facilities Time for this role is vital in being able to maintain the flexibility needed to attend meetings across the working week. As the current Secretary, this has worked very well for me.
  4. We have been able to keep costs to a minimum. Each Trade Union now pays for travel expenses for each of their TLP members. Whenever I have a meeting in Winchester, I am able to book a free visitor space in the underground car park, therefore making savings on car parking charges. The rooms that we use for our meetings in Hampshire House are organised by EPS.
  5. We have been able to maintain excellent industrial relations in Hampshire this year, carrying out our functions in a professional and timely manner. I (attach) statistics that show our casework involvement for the year. Two good examples of the excellent outcomes that our caseworkers achieve are 1. No Tribunal cases involving teachers 2. Redundancies rarely happen due to the collaborative work carried out between caseworkers/members and EPS, creatively seeking solutions that are mutually acceptable.
  1. We are also very proud to be part of two initiatives which we hope will make the working lives of teachers and Head teachers in Hampshire even more enjoyable. The first initiative arose because of a request from a Head teacher. TLP had also been discussing this topic at CAP meetings. The topic was to try and pull together examples of good practice in Observation from across the whole County so that we could update the ‘Guidance’ section in the MOPP. We have now met twice as a working party and believe that we will have some robust guidance for the MOPP which we hope will be very helpful. We are also just beginning to be part of a working party to look at Wellbeing and resilience for teachers, Head teachers and other workers in schools. The main aim of both working parties being the Recruitment and Retention of teachers and Head teachers in Hampshire.
  2. TLP attended the NQT conference and the Recruitment Fair both run by HCC this Academic year. In order to help to promote TLP and our activities, we are currently organising a TLP APP. The cost of this will come from the Union subscription to TLP. The APP should enable us to keep in touch with our members much more easily.
  3. TLP believes strongly that in continuing to fund this panel, Hampshire schools are retaining a group of highly trained individuals, who can be relied upon to use their knowledge, experience and expertise in productive and positive ways to resolve Employment issues. It saves the need for each school to send each Union rep on several days of training a year, costing large amounts from the school budget. Once again, thank you for your support.

I conclude this brief report with some figures and examples of the kind of casework problems that our caseworkers have dealt with over the last twelve months. These examples were sent to me by the County Secretaries of the three main teacher Unions. I have collated them into this summary under the headings as they would appear in the MOPP.

Sickness Absence management - 101

Terms and conditions - 281

Discipline - 50

Capability - 83

Redundancy / restructure - 84

NQTs - 46

Grievance - 61

Child protection - 8

Health and Safety - 8

Pay changes - 4

Conversions 7 (meetings attended when a school proposes to convert to an Academy)

These add up to a larger number of cases than Craig Dyson has put into his report because a lot of casework is resolved by local caseworkers beforethings get too serious. They therefore do not need EPS/Head teacher or Governor involvement.