teaching assistants | Schools Week

School support staff ‘increasingly’ teaching lessons, union warns

Schools are increasingly deploying support staff to teach lessons, a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has found. A survey of school staff found that 78 per cent felt they did identical work to that normally carried out by supply teachers, an increase of 22 per cent since last year, when 64 per […]

Teacher workload report recommends cutting TAs and increasing teachers

The diversity of ability within England’s classrooms is contributing to high teacher workload and needs new strategies that may include streaming and fewer teaching assistants, a researcher has claimed. Research into teacher workload published by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) on Monday found that secondary school teachers in England work 48.2 hours a week on […]

First step of teaching apprenticeships signed off

A group of schools hoping to create a fully vocational pathway to qualified teacher status (QTS) has passed its first hurdle after the government approved its plans for a new apprenticeship for teaching assistants. The framework, drawn up by 11 schools in Buckinghamshire and the West Midlands and first revealed by Schools Week in January, […]

Safeguarding compliance – has the education recruitment sector been lucky so far?

The education sector spends millions, even billions (if you read some reports) per year on supply teachers and support staff. As this demand for teachers continues to grow, thousands of agency staff, often complete strangers are being sent into UK schools on a daily basis, writes David Boon. So it would stand to reason that […]

TA standards ‘nothing to do with us’, says Gibb – as unions publish report

Government-commissioned standards for teaching assistants are finally being released 15 months after they were due, but only on the condition it is “clear” the report has nothing to do with the Department for Education. As Schools Week exclusively revealed last October, the department refused to publish the standards that describe training and responsibility expectations for […]

Teaching Assistants: are they worth it?

In light of Durham County’s decision to cut teaching assistants’ pay, and the recent warning that teaching assistants risk being replaced by poorly-paid “interns”, Helen Saddler makes a case for the invaluable classroom support staff – and argues they need better professional development. When you hear ‘Teaching Assistant’- what comes to mind? “Jack of all trades”, first […]

Why the latest research shows heads should give teaching assistants space to do their jobs

The Education Endowment Foundation has released its latest research on new tools for teaching assistants and called for them to be used more effectively in schools. Here, senior researcher Jonathan Sharples explains why the research is significant. One of the challenging aspects of conducting honest, robust evaluations is that they often suggest, honestly and robustly, […]

Edition 43 editor’s comment

Imagine if there were a quarter of a million people working with the most vulnerable children in our school system and yet receiving some of the lowest pay, working on insecure contracts that don’t include holiday pay and facing incredibly low pensions. We don’t have to imagine. This is the situation for many teaching assistants […]