Headteachers are on a collision course with local authorities which are using a job-evaluation scheme to impose pay cuts on school support staff.

The scheme forms part of the 1997 single-status agreement which provides a national framework for setting local government workers’ pay and conditions but leaves many of the details up for local negotiations. National employers have advised authorities to involve schools in evaluating the jobs of their support staff but this does not always happen.

Kerry George, assistant secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, says:“In the worst cases we’ve had reported to us, the authorities are really putting pressure on schools to use the pay rates they want to use.

“In all but one of the cases that have come to me, the authorities have wanted to pay less than the schools were paying or wanted to pay their support staff.”

In the current tight labour market, headteachers are especially concerned when they are told to pay new appointees less than serving staff, she says.

The National Bursars’ Association is also up in arms over the job-evaluation scheme and the limited consultation there has been with those affected. Peter Rickard, the association’s secretary, says: “Some LEAs have looked at bursars’ jobs and tried to relate them to jobs in local government county halls, but a school bursar’s job is absolutely unique. It carries much wider responsibilities than the job of someone who is working in a big county hall department.”

Mr Rickard claims that some LEAs have invited bursars to accept pay cuts after evaluating their jobs. He will not reveal how large these cuts have been, but says: “It is inappropriate for an LEA to attempt to set salaries for school bursars when this matter should be with heads and governors.”

The NAHT has advised schools that they do not have to toe the local authority line. The School Standards and Framework Act gives governing bodies responsibility for employing support staff and determining their pay - although they do have to select from one of the pay grades on offer through the local authority.

Authorities sometimes warn schools that opting out of the job-evaluation scheme could make them vulnerable to equal pay claims. But as Kerry George points out, to make a successful claim under sex-discrimination legislation an employee needs to find a comparator of the opposite sex, which is difficult with groups such as nursery nurses or classroom assistants.

At the root of the growing tension between schools and LEAs over the single-status agreement is the anomaly that makes LEAs the employers of staff in community schools but gives governing bodies responsibility for day-to-day staff management.

Maureen Cooper, director of Education Personnel Management, says some authorities still act as if they have complete control of all staffing matters.

She gives the example of a governing body that wanted to raise the pay of the school’s bursar and instructed the LEA to do this. The authority flatly refused. Ms Cooper says: “I think that’s probably happening not infrequently around the country, where the LEA has not moved from the old position that they are the gatekeepers in terms of how much people are paid and how they are employed.”