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Sheppey’s Oasis Academy is proposing 30 redundancies among support staff in a major shake-up of teaching jobs.
Principal Tina Lee says the cuts are needed so the academy, which has sites in Sheerness and Minster, can recruit more teachers for an influx of pupils. But furious staff affected by the changes blame “leadership ineptitude.”
Miss Lee said: “We want to change the roles within the staff team so we can provide every student with more access to specialist teachers in smaller class sizes so they can reach their true potential.
“We also want to provide enhanced support to those students who have difficulty accessing learning or join us with low attainment and to deliver our high-quality curriculum more effectively. We have therefore been recruiting for a number of new teachers to join our academy.”
She added: “So we can best meet the needs of our students while maintaining a balanced budget we have to make reductions to the numbers of staff who perform other functions and duties. This is not a process we are undertaking lightly.”
She said the academy was working closely with those whose jobs are at risk as well as unions and professional associations. She said: “Those staff whose roles are being withdrawn will be given priority consideration for relevant new roles that are being created.”
But one teaching assistant under threat of losing their job stormed: “Oasis prides itself on supporting the community yet the redundancies are to the support staff who nearly all live in the community. What Oasis gives with one hand it wants to take with the other.”
'These staff are already overworked and extremely underpaid...'
The staff member said: “Rather than reduce the bloated overpaid failing leadership team, which is the true culprit for Oasis’s failings, the principal wants to force the support staff to suffer 30 redundancies. These staff are already overworked and extremely underpaid, many of them are on such low incomes they receive government top-ups to their wages.”
The employee pointed out senior leaders are paid between £55,000 to £120,000 a year and said there were still issues over attendance, behaviour and grades.
They added of the plan: “The fact the academy struggles every year to recruit teaching staff and to hold on to staff seems to be forgotten.”
The staff member went on: “As you can appreciate, we are extremely angry at these proposed structural changes, especially in times of mass unemployment. Oasis is very good at painting itself as wonderful when actually there is much that is rotten, the failing leadership team being the main one.”
Among the jobs at risk are the attendance team (cut from three to one); science technicians (three to two); art technicians (two to one) and the librarian.
Three staff unions, Unison, GMB and Neu have been asked for a comment.
An Oasis spokesman said: “We are proud to serve the Isle of Sheppey community and take our responsibility to provide the best possible education for our students very seriously. The Academy continues a journey of improvement and we are expecting record numbers of students to join the school this September.
“We want to provide all of our young people with lessons led by specialist teachers, and we would like to have smaller class sizes. To do this we need to create new teaching posts and make adjustments to a number of job roles. To meet this cost whilst maintaining a sustainable budget we are proposing adjusting our wider staff structure, reducing the number of some of our support staff roles.”
He added: “These are proposals at this stage. In recent weeks we have presented to all of our support staff our plan to amend some job roles for their feedback and response, and we have consulted with their unions and professional associations.”
Vacancies at Oasis on the Kent Teach website include teachers for computer science, maths, design technology, religious education, English, music, drama and motor vehicles.
The Sittingbourne School, Highsted and Westlands schools are also searching for staff.
