Michelle Reeve

Some photos from one of the weekly @BellesBlue Walking Netball training sessions here at House of Sport🏐 This fantastic team train using our courts in HOS 2 every Monday from 6pm - 7pm and it's always great to see their dedication and focus during these sessions.

@ewc_cga £45 p/a (from often low salaries) for you to hold hard working and under paid support staff (with enhanced DBS)@UNISONinSchools to account. Staff members employed in professional environments with accountability to SLT & governors with social media/professional conduct.

Thinking about applying for a job with us? We’ve created an animation with information about who we are, and the benefits of working for us.

Absolutely… the JDs for support staff are stretched to the max under the guise of ‘any other duties’ and budget demands @UNISONinSchools @UnisonCardiff1

More than 360,000 council and school support staff across England and Wales begin voting today on whether to take strike action over pay UNISON has warned local government employers must improve the pay offer to avoid the strike threat. UNISON head of local government Mike Short: “Local government finances are in a dire state, but that doesn’t mean staff should be denied a fair pay rise after 14 years of austerity and low wages. Employers still have time to come back with a better offer. “Central government also needs to assist employers by providing stable, long-term funding settlements that allow councils and schools to retain expert staff and protect the vital services on which our communities rely.” The 2024/25 flat rate pay offer of £1,290 from local government employers falls short of what council employees need and has also been superseded by the deals achieved by some other public sector workers. This year’s pay deal was due from April, but the disappointing offer has delayed the process, UNISON says. When the union consulted workers, more than four-fifths (81%) of those who took part opted to reject the sum. Now social workers, teaching assistants, refuse collectors, caretakers, planning officers and other staff at more than 4,000 organisations will be asked if they’re prepared to strike. The six-week ballot will begin today and close on Wednesday 16 October. We are urging employers to improve their offer and calling for central government to help fund an improved deal and look at the longer-term investment it gives to councils.

Fab last session of 2023 @HouseofSportCDF with the awesome walking netballers 💙We’ll be back on 08/01/24 - new players are always welcome! @Walking_Sports @NetballWales @WalesNetball_

@The_TUC This also potentially explains that messed up school opening for 1 day in January 2021, at the height of the alpha variant. So many infected that day.

BREAKING 🚨| The Conservative government IGNORED Covid safety warnings in schools because ministers 'didn't want to give an inch to unions'. Released WhatsApp messages at the Covid Inquiry have revealed: Gavin Williamson and Boris Johnson REJECTED calls for masks in schools because they were in “no surrender mode” towards unions.

Thank you ⁦@studio_response⁩ for sponsoring our new swanky kit! 💙⭐️ If you want to play netball again, laugh & meet like minded women, come along to ⁦@HouseofSportCDF⁩ We train & play each Monday in term-time & the first session is free!

Walking Netball Notice! From next week, Walking Netball will start at 6pm instead of 6:30pm in HOS 3. Your first session is FREE and then it’ll be a small cost £3 each session. Head on over to @BellesBlue for more information🏐

A great turn out for our #walkingnetball this evening @HouseofSportCDF 💙🏐👏🏼

@SeanM_Stacey @CardiffValeArea You are a proper legend my lovely friend 😊

💙 this video and agree with the message! We’ve a great group of ladies @HouseofSportCDF who play, laugh and support each other each week. We meet in term time, Mondays 6.30 - 7.30pm 😊 - come and join us!

@SchoolPriest Gorgeous! 👏🏼⭐️🙏🏻

Blessing on the Year 13 on this their last day. May doors be opened to them as they walk into God’s promises for them. #teamteilo

Lots of collaboration here with awesome support staff @UNISONWales @UnisonCardiff1 @UNISONWales - look forward to positive changes for all education colleagues come September 23.

I still remember the first day I ever heard the words to "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross". At the time, I was like any teenage boy in my class, laughing and scoffing at any attempt by a proper grown-up to tell me something apparently profound about my (or anyone’s) life. We revelled in sniggering at the earnestness of those who claimed there could be something truly worth living for, let alone those who claimed there could be something worth dying for. This one day, one of our teachers was giving one of those little speeches to our class, the kind of profound-sounding speech that would always induce yawns or sniggers. This teacher was talking through the words of that famous old hymn, saying how the truth of it seemed to grip him and move him in a unique way, how he could never quite get over it however many times he heard it. He got to the words, "See from his head, his hands, his feet / Sorrow and love flow mingled down / Did e'er such love and sorrow meet / Nor thorns compose so rich a crown?" I found myself strangely compelled, without feeling able to show it. I couldn't say I fully understood what those words meant yet somehow I felt I knew something important about them. They spoke of something I'd never heard before as though it was something I had always been yearning to hear, as though it was almost too powerful not to be true. The teacher went on, barely managing to get the last few words out because he was properly choking up: "Love so amazing, so divine / Demands my soul, my life, my all." There were full tears in his eyes as he said those final lines. It didn't seem to matter to him that he was standing before one of history's most unimpressible audiences. And yet this time, there was no mockery, just silence. Not a scoff in sight. I think it was more than just me who felt something true about those words, who felt that, after all, there just might even be something so worth living for that it could be worth dying for. The One for whom those words were written faced an even more unimpressible audience than existentially repressed teenage boys. He faced the jeers and scoffs of a crowd baying for his blood. This crowd knew nothing about just how precious that man's blood was, how much it cost to shed it, and how much it would mean for the rest of human history and all eternity. That man could have chosen to come down from where he hung, could have shut up every scoffer in an instant. But he chose to stay up there, to suffer unjustly for the very people who put him there. He did so in order to bring about a more profound justice than any human will or political system could ever imagine. The moment when that man said "It is finished" was the single greatest accomplishment by any person who has ever lived. After that teacher's speech, after the unexpected silence, I could have done something about it. I didn't. It seemed too unthinkable to do something about it. Too big. Too frightening. Soon enough I would be back in the school corridors again, back in the “real world” where profound thoughts about the meaning of life need not apply, where epic, cosmic sacrifice is not required. It would be several years before I finally gave in to the One who hung on that wondrous cross, the One whose amazing love could simultaneously require nothing from me and yet demand everything of me. This was not the first time that I'd turn my face away from Him and pretend it would all be fine. How about you? How many times have you heard about the Cross and been bored by it? How many times have you scoffed at it? However many times it's been, there's still time, for now. There's still time to follow the One who hung on it, and who calls you to take up your own for His sake. But there will not always be time. The prince of glory died on that cross, but he will return one day as the king of glory, and He will not permit scoffers to scoff forever.

I promise you that if some parents were able to witness the behaviour some teachers have to manage on the daily, when the doors are closed, they wouldn’t be questioning the pay, the holidays or the amount of homework being set.

@MissOliviaReads @Teacherglitter @NEUnion @NEUnion have no mandate to negotiate on support staff pay… join @unisontheunion @UNISONinSchools

@Teacherglitter @NEUnion Has there been anything said about support staff? Or is that in a separate meeting??

On the @NEUnion zoom and they want us to reject the offer. They are about to explain the offer now. Will keep you posted as it progresses for those who can’t join the zoom.