Bid to cut SEN exclusions

Schools are to get new guidelines aimed at cutting the exclusions of children with special educational needs.
Children with SEN are more than eight times as likely to be excluded from school then other pupils, according to government figures.
Schools secretary Ed Balls also announced a review of the supply of teachers who are trained to meet the needs of children with severe learning difficulties, and a plan to test new ways of assessing children with SEN.
Balls commended the role of teaching assistants in supporting children with SEN. He said, "The vast majority of parents are happy with the support they receive and pleased with the school their child attends, and teaching assistants play a crucial role in helping some children with SEN".
But he said more expert teachers were needed.
On exclusions, Balls said new government guidance on behaviour would make it a priority to tackle exclusions of SEN pupils.
Read the DCSF announcement

Call to cut 40,000 TA posts is rejected by government

The government says it will not follow a recommendation to cut 40,000 teaching assistant jobs.

Schools minister Vernon Coaker was responding to a controversial report which claims millions of pounds of public money is being wasted because civil servants and head teachers don't seem to understand what value for money means.

The report claims that one primary school spent £50,000 installing three toilets - ten times as much as was needed. Another school spent £35,000 on a £1000 photocopier.

The report's author, former WH Smith boss Richard Handover, calls for nearly a quarter of all TA posts to be cut in a bid to save money, according to the BBC which has seen a leaked copy of the internal report.

According to Children and Young People Now, schools minister Vernon Coaker told delegates at Labour's annual conference, "We have not and we will not implement points made in the report about teaching assistants.

"The fact that there are 40,000 more teachers and 20000 more support staff is something we should be shouting from the rooftops about."

The trade union Unison said children's education could be damaged if teaching assistant jobs were lost. National officer for education Christina McAnea said, "Many TAs work with children with special needs, or support children and their families with complex social needs.

“Cutting back on these posts would damage those most in need of additional help to do well in school."

Research shows that employing TAs and other adults in classrooms significantly improves discipline, she added, which is good for all children. "The effective deployment of TAs releases teachers to get on with teaching, which much surely be what every parent wants for their child."

Lunchtime supervisor "should not have told parents" of skipping rope attack, say heads

A school which sacked a lunchtime supervisor for telling parents their child had been tied up and whipped has been defended by the head teachers' association.
Great Tey primary school near Colchester sacked Carol Hill because she told the father of a seven year old girl about the attack by a group of boys in the school playground.
According to the BBC, the girls parents had been given a note by the school saying there had been "an incident with a skipping rope", and that she had received injuries. Ms Hill, who knows the family, told the girl's father that she'd seen her tied up with a skipping rope and whipped by other pupils.
She was disciplined and sacked by the school for a breach of confidentiality. The story has been reported all over the world, with commentators condemning the school's actions.
But Mick Brookes of the National Association of Head Teachers said people working in a school have to respect the confidentiality of the school. "The person should have said 'I can't comment on this, please go into school and make your feelings known' and that makes sure the incident gets dealt with properly."

"We will not cut teaching assistants" - Ed Balls

Labour's schools secretary Ed Balls says £2 billion could be cut from the education budget, without reducing the number of front line teachers or teaching assistants or increasing class sizes.
Balls said money could be saved if more schools merged into federations to pool senior managers and cut the cost of energy and other expenses.
Speaking on the BBC's Politics Show, he accused the Conservatives of planning savage cuts to front line school staff, which he said would increase class sizes.

DVD tackles bullying of SEN pupils

Schools are being sent resources to help them tackle bullying of children with special needs.
A dvd, called"Make them go away", is aimed at children aged seven to 14. It was funded by the government.
Schools minister Vernon Coaker said:“Any form of bullying is damaging and harmful to the victims and can have a lasting impact on their lives. Taunting and demonising a young person because of their disability is particularly nasty. That’s why we have produced the DVD to raise awareness of the problem with young people and prevent bullying occurring in the first place".

Majority of TAs "thinking of leaving"

More than half of teaching assistants are considering leaving their jobs, and one in ten is actively looking for a new job, according to a survey.

Nearly 500 TA members of Unison took part in the unpublished poll, and two out of three reported that their workload had increased over the past 12 months. More than half the group said they did at least four hours of unpaid overtime a week.

The average take home pay of the full-time TAs in the survey was £978 a month. About half took home less than £1000 a month, while just under half took home between £1000 and £1500.

56 per cent said they were considering leaving their current positions, 23 per cent were seriously considering it, and more than half of these were looking for a new position.

Asked what changes would improve the service they provide, two thirds of the TAs said a greater recognition of their imput.

"Stop vilifying teaching assistants" says union

Academic research is being misused by the media to attack teaching assistants, according to the public service union Unison.
Two big research reports published last week both point to the need for support staff to be properly trained and paid for the work they do. And they highlight the problems created when schools expect them to fill roles they are not qualified to fill.

But some press reports have used the research to denegrate teaching assistants, and their contribution to children's education.
Christine McAnea, Unison's head of education, said, “As a key member of the education team, teaching assistants (TAs) have a very valuable role to play in delivering high quality education for children. They are not teachers – they don’t have the same training or access to ongoing support and certainly don’t get paid the same.
“Recent reports from the Institute of Education and London Metropolitan University highlight two sides of the same problem – that too many headteachers are exploiting low paid support staff. But this is being used by some as an excuse to blame dedicated and hard-working teaching assistants and indeed the whole school remodelling programme in general."
Unison is calling for better pay, training and more paid time for teaching assistants to do their jobs, and backs the Government's plan to train all learning support staff to Level 3.

Researchers take the lid off TAs' role in schools

Two big research studies for the government show that while teaching assistants are playing a fast-growing role in schools, the conditions they work under are not keeping pace.

The studies, one from the Institute of Education and the other from London Metropolitan University, both suggest teaching assistants are doing increasing amounts of unpaid overtime, and both found a lot of dissatisfaction about pay and contractual arrangements.

According to the London Metropolitan Study, less than half the TAs who take whole classes have allocated time to plan, even though they were mostly taking classes during planned as well as unplanned teacher absences.

Most TAs said they enoyed being responsible for whole classes, and that this was a good use of their skills and experience. But one in three said they needed more training and development, especially in behaviour management.

The other study, The Deployment and Impact of Support Staff Project, has taken place over five years. It has produced a lot of detailed information about TAs and the circumstances of their work.

Most support staff are white women aged 36 or over. Two thirds have qualifications equivalent to GCSE level or below, and a third have higher levels of qualifications. Most are on permanent contracts, and primary school staff receive lower wages than secondary or special school staff.

The study found that most teachers have no time allocated for planning, or exchanging feedback, with their classroom teaching assistants, and the majority have had no training to help them work with support staff in classrooms.

Despite this, most teachers felt supported by teaching assistants, and said the growth in the number of support staff had increased their job satisfaction.

This was because pupils' needs were being better met, and their learning and achievement was being enhanced. They also said the personal qualities and skills of support staff and the increased time available to them for teaching had made a positive difference.

But the study found that individual support for pupils in the classroom seemed to have a negative effect on their educational progress. The more individual support pupils received over the year, the less progress they made in English and Maths.

The researchers say these findings are not explained by differences in the pupils themselves (eg that pupils getting most support are low ability pupils and therefore are making slower progress), because their research methods accounted for these differences.

The researchers suggest the negative impact of individual support could be because TAs are not able to prepare lessons, and that low ability children who are supported by TAs may have less contact with their teacher and the curriculum.

Deployment and Impact of Support Staff project from the Institute of Education

Aspects of School Workforce Remodelling Strategies Used, and Impact on Workload and Standards from London Metropolitan University