Amanda Cook-Jones
University of Lincoln
The Changing Role of the Teaching Assistant in the Primary School Sector.
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research Post Graduate and New Researcher Pre-Conference, University of Geneva, 11 September 2006
In the light of the “Re-modelled Workforce” strategy, the role and expectations of many “teaching assistants” are continually changing. Teaching assistants are focussing more and more, particularly since the introduction of PPA time, on delivering the curriculum - teaching whole classes.
A plethora of training courses aimed to support and continue the professional development of the TA have been devised and are available at colleges and universities and are complemented [sometimes replaced] by school training. On the whole, a large percentage of TAs already contracted in schools, didn’t foresee such a watershed in their careers. However, their voices are scarcely heard publicly and both media coverage and research literature does not promote a national understanding of their perspectives, beliefs, goals and expectations. It is possible to suggest that TAs are lacking the channels of communication in order to make their concerns distinguishable from those of others.
In the midst of the teaching assistants’ title change to “Cover Supervisor”, “HLTA”, “Nominated Teacher” [Time for Standards: Transforming the School Workforce 2004], “Associate Teacher”, or my own term of “Hybrid teacher”, this paper addresses the changing role of the teaching assistant in the Primary School sector in relation to their up-and-coming role in the education system.
According to the DfES report “Response to STRB Workload” [October 2002], there were, at the time, over 216,000 support staff [full time equivalent] employed in England’s 23,000 schools. This figure stood purely as a holistic numerical overview and was generally uninformative to the general public about both the employment of and practice of teaching assistants in schools. Firstly, the number count did not differentiate between the Primary and Secondary school sectors, secondly it did not unfold the different identities of a workforce of people characterized under the generic label of “support staff”.
In September 2003 [data collection January 2003], the DfES published new statistics [Table 28]. At this time there was a total of 225,408 [full time equivalent] support staff across the range of England’s schools, which showed an increase of 9400 since October 2002, as a rounded figure. As a cross section, teaching assistants employed in the primary school sector totalled 79,791, an increase of 37,065 since publication of the 1998 figure of 47,726. Simultaneous publications of September 2003 [Table 27b] broke the teaching assistants role into three categories:- Teaching Assistants, Special Needs Support Staff and Minority Ethnic Staff. However, as many teaching assistants’ jobs are multi-fold in varying ways and as many teaching assistants job descriptions do not always fully reflect what is happening in practice, it is impossible to ascertain by government statistics how and why teaching assistants are specifically employed in schools. Whilst one is able to check government statistics for qualified teachers in school, for example, employment and vacancies in subject areas, one cannot be so distinctive with teaching assistants. Also, as the publishing of teaching assistant statistics is a relatively new idea, there is no historical data [pre the early 1990s], for a comparative review on the size of the workforce, or changes within the workforce.
On visiting schools and in reading a plethora of media reports, it is clear that teaching assistants [in their various forms and titles], are being used to “teach” children in England’s primary schools. There is currently no definition [in classroom practice and on the direct level of teaching and learning], between “teaching” and “assisting teaching” that clearly identifies set differences and enables one to wholly categorize one from the other. Teaching assistants are teaching individuals, groups and whole classes with varying levels of teacher support, and government statistics do not identify their job roles in school.
Historically, teaching assistants have been “helping” in schools for many years. However, they had little recognition or professional status as they were often unpaid helpers in the form of parents and local community volunteers, or were school administrative staff extending their assistance “beyond the call of duty”. School secretaries for example, were often called upon to listen to children read, supervise classes for short periods of time, assemble displays and help during practical activities. Likewise, lunchtime supervisors acted as an additional classroom aid, predominantly helping pupils with reading difficulties, and peripatetic teachers with qualified teacher status contracted themselves out to schools, more often than not, to offer specific support to special needs pupils.
The actual importance of the teaching assistants role was initially acknowledged and brought to the public’s attention in the Plowden Report [1967]. Lady Plowden advocated that there should be “a somewhat more generous recruitment of [teachers’ aids] in the educational priority areas” and foresaw that there would be an increase of 77,000 aides and assistants over the next ten years [Kerry www 08.10.2000]. The Plowden Report recommended training for proposed assistants, conceived of teachers as their managers, suggested that their rationale was to raise standards, saw them being recruited in their thousands and argued that they should permeate the junior as well as the infant years [Plowden Report 1967]. In short, this equates to the visions of today’s government proposals, but in 1967, there was no hype on teaching assistant degree training courses which would lead to qualified teacher status, on teaching assistants delivering the curriculum to whole classes, or on them acting as teacher to cover for absenteeism. After the publication of the Plowden Report, many teaching assistants were employed in the primary sector but by far, no where near as many as there are today.
Twenty-seven years lapsed before the topic of teaching assistants hit the press in full force again, and the public’s attention was directed to revaluating the position of teaching assistants though, as stated above, many were already employed in schools at this stage. The introduction of the Code of Practice [1994] with its five stages of intervention for the special needs pupil supported the employment of teaching assistants who were hired to aid the pupil who had an Individual Education Plan or who was indeed statemented. It should be noted though, that the majority of these were teaching assistants who were already on the school employment roll. Due to the sparse hours granted to the special needs pupil [often between two and five hours assistance per week], it proved difficult to hire people that could afford, for many reasons, to work such few hours. Therefore, it became a matter of general practice, to extend the contracts of current employees to cover these job roles. As in the pre Plowden Report years, lunch time supervisors and school secretaries often extended their part time contracts in order to take on the additional role of teaching assistant. Incidentally, this meant that many part time positions in school were granted on an automatic basis, without interview - the only prerequisite being that you were already a current employee of the school. As lunchtime supervisors and school secretaries came to have fulltime employment devised out of several part time contracts, new positions were often filled by parents and members of the local community who had previously “helped out” in school on a voluntary basis.
Simultaneously, government proposals, via the media, to employ unqualified teachers known as the “Mum’s Army” [TES], to deliver the curriculum in primary schools caused a verbal outrage within the teaching profession. It was suggested that a woman who had the experience of being a mother [men weren’t mentioned!], had the qualifications to teach the KS1 curriculum. At the time, such proposals were quelled, or they at least faded from topical issue. Concurrently, more and more teaching assistants were being employed in schools and their practical involvement in the teaching/learning process was continually developing. Thereby the “Mum’s Army” principle was being exercised in practice, not only for the KS1 curriculum but also for the KS2 curriculum. It could be said, before I move on to look at today’s government proposals and policies, that practice was being put into place before policy was publicly issued.
In 1997, the NASUWT launched the “Let Teachers Teach” campaign and the issuing of the DfES Circular 2/98 to schools in England was a result of this. The Circular set out guidelines on limits to the teacher workload but had little effect due to the fact that it was vitiated by many schools that simply ignored it. There is perhaps an ironic correlation with an “overloaded” workforce not having the time to respond to “workload” solutions. The NASUWT went on to ballot members in 2000 in the “Time for a Limit” campaign, which instructed teachers to abide by the provisions of various circulars, before they went on to produce [alongside the NUT], the “Cover to Contract” campaign in 2001. Over four years, the teaching unions put the teacher workload issue at the forefront of their press. However, in theory, the solution to decreasing the workload came from the basis that teachers needed help to teach efficiently rather than from the angle that the workload itself could be decreased - by the elimination of extensive and unnecessary paper work for example. One logical answer to overcoming the workload problem would be to employ more teachers in order that the work be shared. However, this would not only be financially impractical, it is not a viable solution to a workforce that already has a shortage of entrants into the profession. Teaching assistants in the light of this, would now appear to be a valuable commodity.
Working with Teaching Assistants: A good practice guide was issued by the DfES in October 2000. [The origins of the Good Practice Guide lay in the Green paper of October 1997 which stated the government’s intention to pay attention to the vast potential of support staff as a school resource]. It acknowledged that “Recent research and inspection findings [had confirmed] the tremendous contribution well-managed and well trained teaching assistants can make in driving up standards in schools” [Foreward]. Thereby, the government declared that a £350 million funding programme would be implemented in order to improve and increase the support offered by teaching assistants to both teachers and pupils. The programme was set to include the additional recruitment of 20,000 teaching assistants by 2002; effective training for newly recruited teaching assistants and the availability of Standards Fund monies to support higher level training for more experienced assistants; a greater clarity over role and qualifications pathways to be set out in a national framework devised by the Local Government National Training Organisation. This good practice guide served as a pre-emption to the Reforming the School Workforce Strategy which, at this stage, still lay two years “down the line”. Another indication that the government were implementing practice before policy in reforming the workforce structure prior to issuing remodelling strategies. The method of using practice before policy corroborates with psychological research theories that, in implementing new laws, it is easier to focus on changing public behaviour prior to changing public attitude.
In reference to the above “recent research and inspection findings which confirmed the positive impact that teaching assistants can make in driving up standards in schools”, there was, and currently still isn’t, any substantial researched evidence based on statutory testing which confirms that the use of teaching assistants raises academic standards.
In November 2001 the Secretary of State [Estelle Morris], cited the role of teaching assistants as being a key factor in the success of the education system in her speech to the Social Market Foundation [Taken from the White Paper: “Schools Achieving Success“ November 2001]. Alongside the promotion of teacher assistant usage, she made clear it was “the governments view that, not withstanding the promised extra investment in education, the gap between the demand for and supply of teachers [would] continue to grow. Conventional recruitment and retention measures [would] not be enough to ensure sufficient teachers in the long term” [www.askatl.org.uk/home/dfes]. The proposed solution to this was to radically remodel the teaching profession, although the major elements of what was to be later known as “The Remodelling of the Teacher Workforce” were not fully disclosed. The “key factor” in this speech appears to have been not that teaching assistants are needed to reduce the teacher workload, but that they may possibly have a role to play in “the governments view that, not withstanding the promised extra investment in education, the gap between the demand for and supply of teachers [would] continue to grow. Conventional recruitment and retention measures [would] not be enough to ensure sufficient teachers in the long term.”
In March 2001 the DfES “commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers to identify the main factors that determine teachers’ and head teachers’ workload, and to develop a programme of practical action to eliminate excessive workload and promote the most effective use of all resources in schools in order to raise standards of pupil achievement.” [PwC page 1] Their report “Teacher Workload Study” was published December 2001. Note that the key objective of their study is “to raise standards of pupil achievement” and not how to raise standards of pupil achievement while there is a “gap between the demand for and supply of teachers”.