Wasted Talent

Research shows that TAs are often ineffective, or poor value for money, but it’s usually the way in which they’re deployed that’s to blame, says Sue Dixon...

Does your school value its teaching assistants? By this I’m not asking whether you like your TAs; I mean are their skills and contributions to pupils’ outcomes the best they can be?

The role of TAs has shifted over the past 10 years, with more teaching assistants now directly involved with children’s learning outcomes, so it is important for schools to have a clear position on what they want their TAs to do, and ensure they are well equipped to do it.

Visiting schools up and down the country, I’m privy to a range of perspectives. The conversations I have with headteachers, teachers and other staff reveal how varied the daily experiences of teaching assistants can be, which in turn reflects on a school’s attitude regarding the deployment and training of TAs. It is these ‘external indicators’, found in the policy and daily practice of a school, that demonstrate just how much value is actually placed on the role of a TA in any given setting.

Where do your TAs come from?

It’s true to say the recruitment of teaching assistants varies enormously. Here are some typical comments I’ve heard from TAs:

* “I was offered a few hours a week after being a parent helper. I’m now working full-time across Key Stage 1.”

* “I was made redundant from being a kitchen worker and was offered the job of TA as an alternative.”

* “I’ve been a teacher in the past but didn’t want to go back yet as I have a young family. This part-time role suits me fine at the moment.”

* “I had to apply for the job which was advertised by the school and local authority at the time. There were a lot of applicants, we all had to do a little literacy test. I was really pleased when I got the job.”

Do any of these sound familiar? I’m not looking to highlight the rights and wrongs of these particular appointments, but want to ask whether the process of recruitment matches the person who is eventually recruited. For example, if a TA is going to be heavily involved with literacy interventions, does the job advert and person recruited reflect that a good standard of literacy is required? And what does ‘good’ mean – GCSE? Level 2? Level 3? Or a test administered by the school? The killer question in this example must surely be: “Is the person we are recruiting able to effectively support children who require additional literacy teaching?”

How do your TAs spend their time?

As we know, teaching assistants are deployed to work in different ways: with one child, assigned to a particular teacher, across a whole Key Stage, right across the school, as well as other variations.

There are TAs who:

* spend the majority of their time photocopying and carrying out other admin tasks to help free up teachers’ time;

* work predominantly with SEN children and / or children with challenging behaviours;

* provide cover for PPA time by taking whole-class sessions across the school by themselves;

* are deployed to work directly with children in a classroom teaching and learning situation – either 1:1 or groups;

* do all of the above and more!

Does your school know what proportion of TA time is spent on different tasks? The implications of not knowing can result in TAs feeling very pressured and less effective than they could be. Again, here are snippets of coversations I’ve had with teaching assistants that reveal a great deal:

* “I feel like I’m on a treadmill, constantly running from class to class with no time to talk with the teacher to find out what’s going on”

* “I believe I’m an integral part of the teaching team in my year group; I contribute to the planning and feel quite confident with what I’m doing to support the overall teaching and learning.”

* “I work across two or three classes (sometimes more), stand in for lunchtime supervision, prepare displays, deal with individual children’s behavioural issues, speak to parents, plan for guided sessions (sometimes with and sometimes without the teacher’s help) as well as photocopy things the teacher has ‘forgotten’ to do. Oh and tidy up!”

In the case of the latter, I jokingly asked if she had time to eat lunch and go to the toilet – and she said, “No, not always”. How on earth did it get to that point?

We all know that school life is often hectic, varied and pressured for everyone, but it is worth spending some time looking closely at the daily experiences of TAs. They seem to suffer more from their roles and responsibilities ‘accumulating’ over time.

Do you invest in your TAs?

There are so many TAs who are undervalued (or overestimated). I meet TAs who are gifted artists and musicians but spend all their time photocopying. Others have an MA and an aptitude for language learning, but aren’t working with the large population of EAL children in their school; with a bit of training, they could be making a really valuable contribution to children’s language acquisition.

Conversely, and perhaps more worrying, there are TAs thrust into front-line teaching and learning situations where they don’t have the core knowledge and skills to interpret even a scripted intervention programme, let alone devise activities for struggling children. I see this particularly with regard to literacy intervention programmes. Because these programmes are often ‘scripted’ there seems to be a danger of thinking that anyone can administer them. But without the underpinning knowledge about how children learn to read and write (what I call ‘core knowledge and skills’) no programme will have the same impact. That’s just common sense, isn’t it?

I’m not blaming TAs, far from it; they too often tell me that they find themselves working with children to improve reading and writing without that core training having being offered to them. They feel frustrated because they know that, with training, they could be doing a far better job. Those schools that do invest properly in training and support for their TAs will tell you it is money very well spent.

There might come a point where a school has to determine whether a TA is deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – effective or ineffective. But a fair judgement can only be made against a backdrop of how robust and thoughtful that school’s policies and practices are; how clear the expectations, whether there is appropriate training and fair accountability procedures. So before any TA is judged, a school must first look to their recruitment, deployment and training practices and answer the question honestly: how much do you value TAs?

Sue has been delivering a successful two-day literacy course for TAs and teachers across the country: Supporting Reading and Writing: The Core Essentials. It provides crucial understanding about how children learn to read and write and how best to support them to become independent learners. To find out more and book dates for your school email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Valued contributions

Four examples of smart TA deployment…

* Provide core literacy training for TAs working on literacy interventions and see a difference in confidence and depth of delivery.

* Ask a TA being interviewed / recruited to work with Year 5 and 6 children on completing part of a SATs literacy paper – by doing this you can find out at the recruitment stage whether potential candidates have acceptable levels of literacy.

* Change the pattern of TAs’ timetables to ensure they work with children of all abilities.

* Train teachers so they have strategies to address a ‘passive’ TA in their classroom – making for a better learning partnership.

About the author

Sue Dixon is an experienced educator and the founder of Thinking Child, which provides resources and training to support schools, parents and children to work together more effectively. thinkingchild.org.uk