Slipping further down the ladder [IrishTimes]
- Published: 14 December 2010
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.
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