please find bellow an article from the TES front page:

http://www.tes.co.uk/2318752 
Librarians face pay cuts 

Elizabeth Buie 
Published: 15 December 2006 

 
School librarians are warning that the single status job evaluation 
process is leading to pay cuts in some authorities and a potential exodus 
from the profession. There have been accusations that the whole exercise 
is flawed because it fails to recognise the educational role of school 
librarians. 



In North Lanarkshire, where the evaluation process has been completed 
earlier than in some other authorities, school librarians have been put 
down a grade. 
This means that although the basic salary of around £20,000 will be 
conserved for three years, thereafter it will drop to £17,000. 

Already, two of the 27 school librarians in the authority have resigned 
from their jobs to retrain as primary teachers. 

Unison, the union representing many school librarians and other school 
staff affected by the evaluation ? office administrators, ICT back-up 
staff, technicians, and outdoor instructors ? says it is ?very concerned? 
that a system intended to deliver equal pay for women seems to be 
delivering cuts in the pay of already low-paid women in some cases. 

Glyn Hawker, Unison Scottish Organiser, said: ?Obviously, we will look at 
individual or group cases of detriment in specific authorities and, where 
members are being unfairly treated for whatever reason, we will back 
appeals and/or other appropriate action on their behalf.? 

However, different authorities are proceeding at different speeds and 
using different templates or evaluation schemes, making the situation even 
more complex. 

Lindesay Burton, library resource centre manager at Kilsyth Academy, said 
school librarians in North Lanarkshire had lodged an appeal against the 
downgrading decision. 

?We feel the questions did not apply to our position and the work we do. 
They took no account of the fact we are very involved with children and 
classes. We certainly don?t teach whole classes but we do teach half 
classes. 

?So many points are allocated for different aspects of our job, but we 
were found to be three points short of our current grade. They said our 
job was sedentary, that we might get up occasionally to get to a 
workstation. But this is not a job you can easily categorise.? 

A school librarian from another authority, where the outcome of the 
evaluation exercise is imminent, said she and her colleagues feared they 
too would be downgraded, largely because of the nature of the evaluation 
exercise. 

?The questions are designed for office workers, such as how many people 
they supervised, budgets, how many hours they spent on their feet. The 
questions had absolutely nothing to do with our educational input into the 
school.? 

Rhona Arthur, assistant director of CILIPS (the Chartered Institute of 
Library and Information Professionals in Scotland), said her institute was 
concerned about the way skills and competencies of school library staff 
were being evaluated within the scheme. 

They provided support for ICT, supported learning and teaching, and helped 
pupils with literacy and information literacy. 

They also offered a different environment which encouraged flexible and 
independent learning for some pupils with literacy and numeracy problems, 
she said. 

Gavin Whitefield, chief executive of North Lanarkshire Council, said: ?
Despite extensive negotiations, it was not possible to reach a collective 
agreement with the trade unions which would have offered the best solution 
in implementing job evaluation/single status. The council had reached a 
point where it had to move forward to ensure we have a suitable pay and 
grading structure and protect the council from future equal pay claims, so 
the council agreed to implement the pay and grading model with effect from 
November 6.? 

Mr Whitefield said any employee who was not satisfied with the evaluation 
of their post could appeal. 

The council would also look again at posts where the salary will reduce 
after the three-year cash conservation period to see if the job 
description, and therefore the grade, could be changed, he added.