Slough school staff strike over unpaid leave for medical appointments

A group of teachers at Slough’s Baylis Court School have gone on strike over a policy which requires them to take unpaid leave to attend medical appointments.

Staff are locked in a dispute with the Thames Learning Trust, which runs the Gloucester Avenue secondary school.

Under current arrangements, workers are not entitled to paid leave if they need to attend a doctor’s appointment in work hours.

The National Education Union (NEU), which represents a group of staff at the school, contacted the trust in May to raise concerns about the policy.

Talks have been held over the summer and a revised offer was made by the trust for paid leave to be granted for medical appointments – but only at the discretion of the school’s headteacher.

The offer also included up to two days per year to attend appointments for the dependants of staff.

NEU members were not willing to accept the offer due to the limits on accompanying dependants and the potential for the headteacher to refuse leave requests for medical appointments.

The first day of industrial action subsequently took place on Thursday with staff picketing outside the school gates.

Allison Hadwin, head of religious studies and an NEU rep at Baylis Court School, said: “It is not normal practice in the teaching profession to not be paid for a medical appointment.

“Teachers do tens and tens, if not hundreds, of extra hours which they’re not paid for. Teachers are not paid for doing any overtime. We all do significant amounts of additional hours.

“Schools run on goodwill and this is not goodwill.”

Another point of contention, according to the NEU, has been a demand from the trust for staff to provide evidence that they attempted to arrange appointments for outside of school hours.

Further industrial action is planned on Tuesday and Wednesday next week if no breakthrough is made.

Strike action has also been underway at Reading Girls’ School, which is also run by the trust.

Allison added: “I think it’s part of a bigger picture. It’s very hard to recruit teachers at the moment and retention is a big issue.

“There is no flexibility in teaching and sometimes things happen in the normal course of life and we need that reflected in our contracts.”

Laurence Rose, regional development officer at the National Education Union, said: “For obvious reasons, this policy is very unsatisfactory because it means staff are financially penalised for being ill and wanting to seek treatment.

“The Trust is stating it’s taking this position because of operational costs but we think that’s really misguided because the cost of long-term sickness which might result from not attending these appointments is much more financially detrimental to the trust.”

Thames Learning Trust could not be reached for comment.