100 signatures reached
To: Karin Smith (MP Bristol South), Lucy Livings (Regional Director for South West, Department for Education), Sue Elliott (CEO TiLA), Neil Blundell (CEO CST), Hugh Barrett (Chair TiLA), Sir David Eastwood (Chair CST)
Open Letter in support of the staff at the Cathedral Schools Trust
We, the parents and carers of children attending a Cathedral Schools Trust school, write to you with grave concern about the ongoing support staff strike. We fully appreciate that this is a complex issue — involving pay awards, budget constraints, and trust responsibilities — but we urge you to take urgent and principled action to resolve it in the interest of fairness, continuity for pupils, and trust stability.
1. Our Position & Purpose
- Our children, and indeed the school as a whole, depend heavily on the dedication of support staff: administrative, pastoral, catering, premises, and other roles. The functioning of teaching, safeguarding, lunches, site maintenance and more is materially impacted when they withdraw.
- The fact that these staff have been forced to strike over refusal to backdate nationally agreed pay awards places the Trust in a difficult moral and public relations position — especially as other MATs and local authorities have honoured their commitments.
- As parents, we are not in a position to adjudicate financial constraint arguments, but we do expect accountability, transparency, and fair treatment of staff, especially those on lowest pay scales.
2. Our Requests
We respectfully request that all the key stakeholders addressed in this letter take immediate steps to:
- Implement the backdated pay award for support staff to reflect the national agreement (or equivalent) from the relevant effective date.
- Communicate to staff and the wider parent body a clear timeline by which this will be done (e.g. “payment to be completed by [date] at latest”).
- Publish the rationale for any decision not to fully backdate or for partial implementation, showing how finances are balanced and what mitigations are in place.
- Engage in good-faith negotiation with NEU and Unison representatives to revert the strike and restore full staff capacity.
- Offer a public assurance (on the Trust website / via parent communication) that the rights, dignity and wellbeing of all staff will be respected, and that the Trust is committed to resolving the dispute quickly for the sake of children’s education.
6. Publish open and honest answer to our key questions:
“Why were teachers awarded the backdated pay but the support staff were not?”
“What is the rationale for delaying CST support staff pay rises until September when the vast majority of other trusts, especially in the Bristol area, backdate the pay increase to 5 months earlier in April?”
“What does the trust do with the government funding for the support staff pay increase that it keeps for these 5 months?”
“What does the trust plan to do with support staff and teachers pay saved from the strike days?”
3. Stakeholder Impact & Leverage
- We believe that allowing this dispute to continue unchecked damages the Cathedral Schools Trust reputation, undermines confidence among staff and parent communities, and risks greater public scrutiny (especially as CST pursues a merger).
- As a parent body, we are prepared to mobilise support for these demands through petition, parent meetings, press engagement (local media), and direct appeals to DfE, if necessary.
- We also expect that DfE / Regional Directors will take interest in whether the Cathedral Schools Trust is upholding good governance and employee relations standards, particularly given the broader responsibilities implied by a MAT merger or expansion.
4. On the Merger
We wish to note respectfully that unresolved industrial disputes and perceived governance failings can be relevant considerations when DfE evaluates mergers or trusts’ capacity to expand.
We do not feel the this ongoing issue was made part of the consultation with parents and if it had been the feedback would have been different.
We do not know how much of this ongoing issue was was shared with the DfE in their approval of the merger. A Freedom of Information request will be made to understand if the DfE was made aware
While we do not demand the merger be blocked, we do expect that the Cathedral Schools Trust demonstrate its readiness for growth by handling internal staff issues responsibly and swiftly.
5. Next Steps & Timeline
We propose that you respond to this letter via the unions, indicating whether you accept our requests, your plan and timetable for implementation, and how you intend to bring about a resolution. In the absence of satisfactory progress, we reserve the right to escalate further.
We remain hopeful that the Cathedral Schools Trust trustees will act with integrity and urgency, and we stand ready to support a constructive resolution.
Why is this important?
Our children, and indeed the school as a whole, depend heavily on the dedication of support staff: administrative, pastoral, catering, premises, and other roles. The functioning of teaching, safeguarding, lunches, site maintenance and more is materially impacted when they withdraw.
The fact that these staff have been forced to strike over refusal to backdate nationally agreed pay awards places the Trust in a difficult moral and public relations position — especially as other MATs and local authorities have honoured their commitments.
As parents, we are not in a position to adjudicate financial constraint arguments, but we do expect accountability, transparency, and fair treatment of staff, especially those on lowest pay scales.