Education Personnel Services

County Hall

Martineau Lane

Norwich

NR1 2DL

Minicom: (01603 223833)

7 May 2002 01603 219050

glynis.ballard.edu@norfolk.gov.uk

Dear Colleague

You will be aware that, as part of the overall Teachers Pay Award for 2002, it was determined that relevant bodies should make a single payment of £33 to eligible teachers in respect of their registration with the General Teaching Council.

The LEA has now received notification from the Employer’s Organisation that this sum should be paid with May salaries, and arrangements have been made with Capita payroll for this to happen.

The £33 will be payable to all teaching staff with the exception of any instructors or graduate teacher trainees. The reason for this is that these categories of employee are not required to register with the General Teaching Council and hence not required to pay the fee. The payment is pensionable and subject to tax and national insurance deductions.

Part time teachers will receive the full £33 and not a pro rata payment. Where a part time teacher works in more than one school the cost will be split between the schools according to the number of hours worked in each.

This payment is part of this year’s statutory pay award and the Government is not providing any additional funding for LEA’s or schools over and above that already made available for this purpose.

It has been recommended by the Employers Organisation that teachers receive individual notification that the sum has been paid as well as by way of their pay slip. I am therefore enclosing a number of letters that should be distributed to eligible teachers in your school to advise them accordingly and I would appreciate your cooperation with this exercise. A sample letter only has been included for Foundation schools as the Governing Body may wish to make alternative arrangements.

Supply teachers are also eligible to receive this payment and it has proved difficult nationally to design a simple method to ensure that this happens to suit the variety of circumstances.

It has therefore been recommended by the Employers Association that, supply teachers working during May should receive the £33 and that the responsibility for making this payment should rest with the school at which the teacher works the most hours during the month.

This process will continue throughout the remainder of the calendar year, by which time it will be assumed that all active supply teachers have received the payment. Supply teachers will be written to individually by Education Personnel Services.

Part of the administrative process undertaken by the LEA will be to ensure that no teacher receives the payment more than once and this will become part of the appointment process undertaken by EPS. The letters to be distributed to staff will set out their responsibility in this respect when moving schools and taking up new posts. This is also an issue with those teachers who work for more than one employer, be it another LEA or a Foundation school. The recommendation is again that the responsibility for making the payment should rest with the employer for which the teacher undertakes the majority of their work.

As I am sure you will appreciate the decision to pay the £33 in this way has made the operation significantly more complicated but, for the vast majority of teachers, the payment should be made in May.

At the same time, the LEA has also received notification from the General Teaching Council concerning those teachers who are required to register with the GTC but who have yet to pay their fees. Foundation and VA schools would have received this notification individually.

Some teachers have opted to pay their fees by a deduction from payroll and this will happen in May. For those teachers who have not yet indicated how the fee will be paid, the GTC has instructed the LEA to deduct the sum from salary payments in May also. Schools were alerted to this requirement earlier in the year in MI Sheet 55/02. This is a statutory requirement and the LEA must act accordingly.

The fee is £23 and Capita payroll has been instructed to deduct this sum from those teachers whose names have been provided by the GTC and a copy of the list for your school is enclosed with this letter. The asterisk against some names indicates those teachers who have requested the deduction be made in this way. For Voluntary Aided schools and those Foundation schools using Capita payroll, it will be necessary for you to forward the list that you have received to either EPS or your payroll provider. The LEA has not received this information from the GTC.

You will note that there may well be names on the list of teachers who are no longer employed at your school, and for whom deductions cannot be made. Education Personnel Services will inform the GTC where it has not been possible to make the deduction. Where a teacher has transferred to another Norfolk school the deduction will be made. Deductions will not however be made for any teacher whose name does not appear on any list.

Reference to the payment of the fee has been made in the letter that you will be distributing to staff.

At the same time the LEA has been required to provide the GTC with an updated list of staff employed in Norfolk schools. The GTC will amend their records accordingly and may contact individual teachers concerning registration and fee payment at a later date.

For those Foundation and Voluntary Aided schools that have purchased EPS this can be done for you by sending to Glynis Ballard, Personnel Manager, the full staff list sent to you by the GTC. This will be checked and amended and returned to the GTC by the required date.

Yours sincerely,

Bryan Slater

Director of Education