This year is the tenth Stars in Our Schools, an annual celebration of school support staff. From reception and canteen staff to teaching assistants, technicians and site managers, it takes a whole team to make school a safe, happy place for children to learn.
Across the country this November, hundreds of school support staff will be celebrating their invaluable work, which not only affects children, but wider communities too.
Among them will be Miriam Rathore (pictured above), a pastoral manager at Blackburn Central High School.
It’s a job she’s done for the last 19 years, which means that the pupils she used to support are now parents bringing their own children to the school gates.
“I started in 2005, so the children who were in year 11 then have since grown up and are now parents to their own children.”
Miriam is responsible for the welfare of all year 8’s. “I work alongside the head of year 8 and we’re the first port of call for attendance, behavioural issues, welfare and sanitary products. I’m the person kids come to and say things are going wrong at home.”
It’s part of Miriam’s job to support parents too. When families are struggling, Miriam signposts them to the safeguarding team who can help arrange food parcels for instance.
“Over the years, we’ve managed to create a culture where parents don’t treat us as just the school. They know we’re a sanctuary, whether you’re in dire straits or have an issue at home, parents can come and speak to any of us freely, and that’s important.”
However, her support for parents and children doesn’t just end when the school gates close. Miriam has played a key role in creating this safe, approachable atmosphere through after-school cooking classes and mums and daughters clubs.
“Parents who are struggling to feed their kids often don’t know how to cook from scratch. It’s cheaper to cook from scratch, so I’ve arranged cooking lessons at school. All the parents have to do is bring a container to take the food home.”
The mums and daughters clubs in particular are designed to ‘break down barriers’, she says. “Some mums have had a bad experience at school themselves and are tense when they’re trying to speak to staff. The rule for the mums and daughters club is that we don’t talk about school. We do manicures, cooking lessons or make bath bombs and lip balm”.
Miriam has ensured the school is officially recognised as a school of sanctuary for refugee and asylum-seeking children and their families. “We’re also a Halo school, recognising that for children of African and Caribbean origins, hairstyles are of cultural significance,” she explains.
Her passion for community support comes from personal experience. “When I was growing up, we lived in Dagenham, and it wasn’t a nice place if you were brown or mixed race, which I am”, she says.
“I didn’t feel welcome in my school. So, I make sure that when a new person joins, with a new nationality we don’t have in the school, we print off the flag and hang it up. There are 40 nationalities in our school and it’s all about cohesion. We were actually mentioned in a government green paper for that.”
While this work is valuable in its own right, it has also won awards. In 2022, Miriam and her school won the Together Award at the BBC Radio Lancashire Make a Difference awards ceremony.
Alongside her job, Miriam has been a UNISON shop steward for the last 18 years. Over this time, she’s seen the changes to schools under successive Conservative governments.
“We had one boy who asked if he could do his written work on cardboard”
“Teachers have to work a lot harder because with funding being taken away, we’ve lost support staff. You really can see the difference.”
Figures from April 2024 found that 75% of primary schools have cut teaching assistants.
“We’ve also seen an increase in families seeking support. We had one boy who asked if he could do his written work on cardboard because he didn’t have any paper. We sorted out stationary and a laptop for him and arranged food parcels for the family.”
Miriam says the toughest part of her job is when she knows a child has a difficult home life, but is limited in what she’s able to do. “It might not be that they’re being beaten up, it might just be that they’re poor. We see children come to school in winter with no coat on”.
So why is Stars in Our Schools important? “It’s about acknowledging the structure of the whole school,” says Miriam.
“All the teachers could turn up, but if the site supervisor didn’t turn up, they couldn’t open. The same goes for the cleaners. The pastoral staff like myself are all cogs in the machine and, if any are taken out, the machine won’t work.”
To celebrate, Miriam works with her support staff colleagues in access provision, who assist in printing off 1,000 postcards, mainly designed by students, and every child is given one to send to any member of support staff. They are returned with heartfelt messages.
“It makes such a difference to staff because some people just don’t expect it. The cleaning staff had a whole noticeboard full of thank you cards. It creates such a nice buzz when the children acknowledge and are grateful for what we’re all doing.”
“I want to be that friendly face for the children”
Janey Blackmore (pictured above) has been the cook in charge at St Mary’s Primary School in Jarrow for the last 10 years. Prior to this, she was a cook at a secondary school. Despite working in school kitchens for 18 years, she is adamant she never planned to stay in the job this long.
“I started this job when my son was four, and said I’d leave when my son left school. He’s now 22 and I’m still here because I love it.”
Janey leads a team of four who feed around 165 children, across seven year groups, every day. “I enjoy making sure that the children have had a good, well-balanced meal.
“For some children, it’s the only hot meal they get in the day”.
Speaking after one of the first lunches of the new school year, Janey smiles: “Reception have just come in and are starting to try new things they’ve never had at home.
“There are some children who don’t get a proper meal at home, so they’re not used to eating what’s on the menu, so you have to coax them and say: ‘try a little bit’. You don’t want to pressure them, but you do want them to have something decent to eat.”
This is what Janey finds most rewarding about her job. “You watch them come to the counter and they’re scared and don’t want to talk to you and don’t want to try what’s on the menu.
“After six years, you see them leaving, they’ve shot up two feet, they’ve got a bit of an attitude, and they’re willing to give everything a go.
“I know the dinner staff go by ‘Miss’, but I’ve always wanted the kids to just know me as Janey, so I’m more approachable.
“Sometimes when the children are worried at dinner time, they come and talk to me when I’m tidying up.
“I’ll be 57 this year and I can still remember the school cook at my senior school. I want to be that friendly face for the children who come to me.” she says.
Janey is looking forward to celebrating Stars in Our Schools because she feels that non-teaching staff are often forgotten. This year, she’ll be baking star-shaped biscuits to put in the staff room.
“Without support staff, there’d be no school,” she says. “Without cleaners, kitchen staff, dinner nannies, classroom assistants … the school can’t run.
“It’s important for people to be appreciated and let them know that people do care about the work they’re doing and that they’re not just a payroll number, they’re a person who’s really putting effort in to help the children.
“It’s a big responsibility feeding over 160 children within the space of an hour each day. If a child gets ill, that’s on my head.”
UNISON national officer for education and children’s services, Joanna Parry, said: “Schools couldn’t run without support staff, yet their contributions are rarely acknowledged. That’s why it’s so important that Stars in Our Schools is celebrated each year all over the UK, to help raise the profile of the vital roles our members in schools play.”
Stars in Our Schools is Friday 29 November.
Support Assistant pay is an insult to those that work the role…no one should be paid a level 2…I have been a LSa Ta HLTa the pay does not reflect the role or responsibility being asked of them.
We need a overhaul of terms pay and conditions or we will fail to recruit in the long term.
Yes – all these people are incredibly supportive and necessary.
As a member of Unison, it would be nice to see reports including LSAs – Learning Support Assistants), who work in Further and HE Colleges.
College support staff rarely get a mention anywhere. And are paid a lower rate than school TAs.
Review their pay to match the current living crisis.
The role of classroom support staff has changed dramatically post covid. We are increasingly called upon to fulfill tasks we were not originally employed to do, are often not qualified to do and certainly not given adequate pay to do.
We are increasingly becoming managers of behaviour and /or direct SEN one to one staff. If that’s in your job description, that’s fine. But it isnt in mine, but it’s what I’m called to do.