"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

TA "exploitation" condemned

Support staff are being exploited because of reforms designed to reduce the workload of teachers, a teachers' union conference has warned.

A motion passed at the ATL conference says the Workload Agreement improved teachers' work-life balance. But the conference "deplored" the resulting exploitation experienced by support staff.

The motion called on the union's leadership to lobby for the forthcoming school support staff negotiating body to make sure "all who are involved in the direct day-to-day teaching of children are treated fairly", and reward and develop the professionalism of support staff.

It's official - TAs' main job is teaching

Teaching assistants' main job is teaching children rather than assisting teachers, says a major government study.
And children get six times more direct attention from TAs than from teachers.
Classroom based support staff are in a "direct pedagogical role" for much of the time, supporting and interacting with pupils. They spend more time doing this than assisting teachers, or the school, say the researchers from London's Institute of Education.
With teachers, pupils were most often one of a crowd, in "audience mode"as they listened to the teacher talking. But with teaching assistants they were six times more likely to be the focus of attention, with more active and sustained interactions. The amount of individual attention children get from TAs varies with their level of need, but they all received more from TAs than teachers.
Teaching assistants in primary schools work mostly with groups of children, while secondary TAs were more likely to work one to one with pupils.
The research confirmed that more and more TAs are working unpaid overtime. They were "coping with work in excess of their paid time as they became more drawn into lesson planning, preparation and feedback."
The growth in TAs' teaching role was happening in individual schools mainly for practical rather than deliberate educational reasons.
Although many were positive about their jobs, these new responsibilities were often not matched with better pay, more paid hours, inclusion in meetings and decision making, or opportunities for training, say the researchers.
Deployment and Impact of Support Staff in Schools and the Impact of the National Agreement (Strand 2 , wave 1)

TAs "paying the price" for school workforce remodelling

Teaching assistants are carrying out higher level responsibilities without HLTA posts or rewards, says a report from the trade union Unison.

More than one in three TAs said their job included HLTA duties, but only 6% had even part-time HLTA status.

"There is strong evidence that schools are not appointing HLTAs when they could or perhaps should, and are relying on other support staff to carry out this kind of higher level work

"Some members of the school support staff workforce are therefore paying the price for remodelling in lower salaries", says the report.

The survey was based on evidence from more than 1000 members of Unison, and the managers of 200 schools.

Two thirds of the support staff in the survey said their job content had changed as a result of school workforce remodelling. One in ten said they were doing teaching duties - teaching whole classes, setting work for supply teachers, monitoring children's work and marking for part of the time.

There was a "worrying blurring" of the roles of covering for a teacher during an unplanned absence, and time-tabled teaching by someone in an HLTA role, says the report.

About four out of ten have received some sort of pay increase as a result of the changes in their work. Split contracts are common - just under half the schools in the study said they used them. But pay levels for staff on split contracts were lower than average. "This could be seen as remodelling on the cheap," says the survey.

Two thirds of schools were using term time only contracts, ranging from 38 to 44 weeks. Often different support staff in the same school had different arrangements.

More than two thirds of staff were "regularly" or "quite often" working on the school premises outside normal school hours, either catching up with general duties or doing distinct out of hours work such as breakfast clubs or extended schools. But only 15% said they were getting extra money for out of hours work, with most relying on Time Off In Lieu (TOIL).

Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis said: "Support staff are increasingly demonstrating their skills and value and are considered part of the education team in most schools.

"The survey shows their increased responsibilities are better rewarded in many schools but there is still much to do."

School remodelling - the impact on support staff Unison 2007
See also Unison's updated School Remodelling: a Unison survival guide

More TAs mean children are better cared for - Ofsted

A ‘revolutionary shift’ in school working practices has led to better care for vulnerable children, says Ofsted.

Pupils generally are getting more support as a result of the huge growth in the number of teaching assistants and other support staff in schools. Deploying adults with different skills means schools have improved care and guidance for vulnerable children and those at risk of exclusion.

But some schools don't pay enough attention to the training, career development and performance management of support staff, and don't match skills and expertise closely enough to school needs.

The workforce reforms have also transformed teachers’ lives by reducing their workload – although there is little evidence to show this has led to improved standards says Ofsted.

Changes implemented, such as making greater use of support staff for administrative and routine tasks, had led to teachers having more time to plan lessons, mark books and liaise with colleagues.

In almost three quarters of the 99 schools visited, 51 of which were primary schools, it was strongly believed that standards had risen as a result.

But as few of the schools had officially monitored the impact of the changes on pupils’ learning there was a lack of firm evidence to support this.

The changes are the result of a deal struck between the government and unions, which sees the changes being brought in over a four-year period.

According to figures from the Department for Children, Schools, and Families there are now 100,000 more teaching assistants than in 1997

Reforming and developing the school workforce.