Education in 2025: the year of the teaching assistant?
Teaching assistants help keep teachers’ stress and workload levels in check and offer support to special educational needs students. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Last year there were not one, but two days celebrating the contribution teaching assistants (TAs) make to classrooms. Even greetings card manufacturers got in on the these 330,000 individuals – overwhelmingly women – help keep teachers’ stress and workload levels in check, maintain classroom discipline and provide learning, emotional and physical support to children with special educational needs (Sen) enabling them to enjoy a mainstream recognising the value of TAs – a group who make up 25% of the school workforce – is overdue, not least because of the rough ride they’ve endured recently. Austerity saw funding for training scrapped, then the coalition’s “bonfire of the quangos” ruined the creation of a national body for pay and conditions for school support staff. The public sector pay freeze has also kept TAs’ already low wages depressed as living costs the most recent storm TAs weathered followed reports suggesting the Department for Education was considering reducing the number of teaching TAs. This suggestion was originally made in a report from the Reform thinktank on potential savings to the education as the authors of the research on which this recommendation was based, my colleagues at the Institute of Education and I have argued that such action is not only based on a partial reading of the evidence about impact, but that is likely to do more harm than good for students, teachers and so for 2025, rather than a couple days of celebration, I’d like to see a year of action to seriously improve the role and function of TAs. The timing couldn’t be better. In September, new reforms will change how schools address the needs of Sen students, including a new code of practice. At the same time, schools will receive more money to spend on struggling disadvantaged students via an increased pupil premium historically, the work of TAs has been inextricably linked with support for these students. It seems inconceivable that schools will put these new reforms and changes into practice without considering the role of TAs. Evidence shows what schools can do to improve how they deploy and prepare TAs and to ensure they make a meaningful contribution to learning, plus a process for putting it into there are three main actions that school leaders, teachers and TAs need to take.1. ProfessionaliseSchool leaders need to set out a vision for the role and purpose of TAs in their school, defining the contribution they will make to learning. This means addressing some fundamental questions about what TAs can
Related Posts
World Cup 2025: Greeces Kostas Katsouranis rejects talk of division- Gordon Strachan crashes back to Earth after Ireland adrenaline rush
- José Mourinho steals punchline from Tony Pulis to deliver Chelsea win
- 'Man on!' – football fans' strange calls to action
- Makes You Think: Ban women and children from football after return to dark ages at Aston Villa
- Gareth Bale and Pepe could miss Spanish Super Cup for Real Madrid