In the light of Monday’s (17th July) Parliamentary debate on Teaching Assistant (TA) pay and conditions, Peter Shreeve, Assistant District Secretary of the National Education Union, told News OnTheWight,
“After several days of teacher action this year, it’s time to consider what’s happening with TA pay.
“A petition to Parliament to ‘Recognise Teaching Assistants as an important asset to schools by raising wage’ closed in February with 88,410 signatures.
“In advance of the debate, the House of Commons Petitions Committee conducted its own petition, completed by 22,506, of which 84% were working TAs. The results are hardly surprising to TAs everywhere. They strongly illustrate poor pay and an increasingly more complex workload.”
Both petitions highlight issues:
- Many TAs are employed on term-time only contracts. This forces them to find extra employment to make ends meet.
- Despite having extra responsibilities, 94% have no extra financial allowances.
- Roles regularly change depending on needs, impacting negatively on TA and learners. One former TA said: “I was employed as a 1:1 but very quickly had to move past those duties and become a whole class assistant which isn’t fair on the child that I was hired to support.” Increasingly the norm with SEND children, especially those most in need with EHCPs.
- Expectations continually widening. Many start as classroom assistants, but tasks expand to include class cover, marking, first aid, teaching SEND groups and more. Thus, the teaching assistant becomes an assistant teacher!
When behavioural problems increase in frequency and severity, one TA said,
“It also has an impact on the rest of the children in the class as it disrupts their learning, and they also get very distressed. It falls on TAs to work with these children without any training.
“It’s unfair on staff and children as there is no support for us. The government must look at opening more special schools where these troubled children can be cared for in a better environment.”
Mr Shreeve went on to add,
“In summary, TAs are often well qualified with degrees. They are vastly underpaid considering the tasks they are expected to handle. Nevertheless, they love their job.
“All teachers know: TAs ‘are all too often the only reason a student will stay in school. Their nurturing nature and patience is priceless, their ability to break down work so a student can understand is phenomenal.’
“Nationally, we now have about 281,000 full-time equivalent TAs. It’s time to pay them what they deserve, before we have yet another education disruption.”
Image: tyler lagalo under CC BY 2.0
