Unlocking the potential: the enhanced role of support staff for schools in England
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005
as part of the symposium
New Partnerships for learning: remodelling the workforce in schools in England
Paper presented by:
Dr Coleen R. Jackson and Dr Dorothy Bedford
For further details contact:
Dr Coleen R. Jackson, (formally of Roehampton University, now at Chichester University),
Dr Dorothy Bedford
Please do not publish part or all of this paper without permission from the authors
Unlocking the potential: the enhanced role of support staff for schools in England
Abstract:
This paper reviews the legislation in England on the use of adults other than teachers in schools. The paper explores the impact of the legislation during the first year of operation. It examines strands from the education reform and how Higher Education Institutions, Local Education Authorities and schools in England have worked in partnership to transform classroom practice.
The journey for the 22,972 schools (477 nurseries, 17,861 primaries, 1,160 Special and 3,454 secondaries) in England and for the government began in 2002 when the Government published Time for Standards: Reforming the school workforce (DfES / 0751/2002). In this document Estelle Morris, the then Education Secretary, set out her intentions to transform the working practice of teachers. The plan was to remove a range of administrative tasks from their role and simultaneously set an agenda to develop the career pathway in school for teaching assistants and administrators.
In the spring of 2003, Roehampton University (RU) held a conference for headteachers, LEA personnel and all those involved in the deployment of support staff, entitled ‘Unlocking the potential’. This was the first of many ventures which has led to the involvement of RU in projects and developments related to the enhanced role, professional development and career pathways for support staff as professionals in their own right.
Our research has involved participants on our courses and our Foundation Degree programmes for Teaching and Learning Assistants and School Administrators. The latter are delivered in collaboration with a Further Education College. Emergent findings indicate further areas for research and development alongside identifying aspects of good practice.
Introduction
‘Remodelling is a great opportunity to support the professionalism of teachers and support staff. It is about ensuring that time of all staff is focused on what will add most value to pupils.’
David Milliband, Minister for Schools Standards
Over recent decades a combination of factors not least of all social and technical developments; employment legislation; Government initiatives; new models of learning and pupil assessment have created pressures, which are forcing schools to change. Estelle Morris’ original intention was to support schools in building the momentum for these changes whilst raising standards of pupil achievement.
The need to remodel the workforce was becoming apparent. NCSL (2004), Menter et. al (2002); and Jackson, Bedford and Peat (2003) to name a few, cited a range of issues such as:
· Teachers identified workload as the major reason for leaving the profession
· Over 30% of teachers working week is spent on non-teaching activities
· Teachers generally have a poor work / life balance
· 45% of teachers are due to retire in the next 15 years
· 30% of teachers leave teaching in their first 5 years
· There is a need for the development and professional support for support staff
· There are specific teacher shortages in a number of key subjects
· There is a need for recognition of individual learning styles
· There is a need for assessment for learning not just assessment of learning
· There is a need for collaboration within and between schools
This is an interesting list because it is primarily concerned with what can be done for teachers as opposed to how support staff already work in schools and could potentially offer more in the future. From our experience as senior leaders and tutors on professional development courses with support staff it is evident that over a long period of time this group of personnel in schools have been exploited and undervalued. Throughout the recent government legislation (DfES 2002, 2003, 2004) and subsequent papers (NCSL 2004) is the concern that ‘remodelling’ is being undertaken to relieve the stress on teachers. However, there is little empirical evidence to suggest that introducing these measures will reduce the stress of teachers. A more holistic approach might have been to consider the potential role of all employees within a school and how they might make an enhanced contribution to the lives and the learning of students.
In defining support staff within a school we consider that there are three main groups, those focused on learning, administration or premises. Within these groups there are numerous sub-groups. These are discussed later in the paper.
The programme for remodelling the workforce is staged in three phases with the first and second focussing, in the main, on the development of the teaching assistant role.
Empirical data has been collected since 2004 by means of informal group interviews with students on Administrator and Teaching Assistant Foundation Degree courses (FdA), Teaching Assistant courses at RU and a group of School Administrators. This paper explores the emergent issues arising from legislation and concludes by describing some research the team from Roehampton University are engaged in and outlining emergent findings.
The pathway to unlocking the potential – creating a new profession
During their second term of office the government in England introduced an education reform agenda to raise standards in schools. It has a number of strands including
· Encouraging more graduates into teaching
· Reviewing the training, development and support of teachers
· Providing a professional career pathway for all support staff
· Widening participation to allow access to higher education for groups of individuals that otherwise would not have attended university
Roehampton University has been involved in many of these government initiatives including introducing foundation degrees for teaching and learning assistants and administrators; developing the student associate scheme to give undergraduates and graduates an experience in school to encourage them to consider teaching as a career. The university involvement also includes two related research projects (1) how teachers are prepared to work in partnership with support staff and (2) the use of post-doctoral students to improve the delivery of science in Specialist Trust schools whilst gaining Qualified Teacher Status.
Since 1998 workforce remodelling has been gaining momentum in England with the government issuing circulars 2/98 and 22/98 Reducing the bureaucracy in schools. This was followed by the publication Time for Standards: Reforming the school workforce (DfES / 0751/2002) this outlined four main strands which were intended to:
· enable schools to recruit more support staff;
· introduce a new framework for the teacher-support staff relationship;
· improve training, qualifications and career progression opportunities and promote development of higher level roles;
· support headteachers and governors in managing the change and deploying the support staff effectively.
Parallel initiatives to those in education can be seen in other government workforce reform, for example ‘Agenda for Change’ in the National Health Service. Underlying these reforms are the Regional Development Plans, such as The Regional Economic Strategy (2003) which describes ‘skills shortages’ as one of the three ‘main problems of success’ in the South East. It stresses a need ‘to maximise the employability of our current and potential workforce’ (p4 para. 6Addiionally there is also emphasis on the need to ’prepare business and the workforce for future changes in the workplace’ (p.38 para.3. Other regions in England have produced similar strategic documents. Government publications predicted a 20,000 increase in the number of teaching assistants alone during 2002 (Estelle Morris, Supporting Teaching Assistants DfEE 014/2000). Yet schools have not been given access to any new money to fund the enhanced roles of teaching assistants let alone all support staff.
The governments ‘Workforce Reform’ initiative is probably the most significant change in school improvement and certainly teachers working conditions. It is intended that 25 identified tasks (appendix 1) are to be removed from teachers and completed by support staff in the future. This new way of working for teachers in schools will require them to be adaptable and work in new organisational structures and require them to gain skills that have not been addressed in government literature. For instance, in considering the role of Teaching Assistants (TAs) Ofsted (HMI 434) clearly states that unless teachers have the skills necessary and adaptability to direct effectively the work of TAs then the whole of this government agenda will be undermined. The same report warns that the full benefit of TAs may not be delivered if this is not researched. DfES (2002) cites 16 categories of staff ‘who, using a range of different titles and at many different levels, are providing support’ (p.48) in schools, table 1.
Table 1. 16 categories of support staff in schools
Teaching assistantsNursery nurses
Science technicians
ICT/technical support staff
D and T technicians
Music specialist
Language Specialists
Bilingual support assistants / Librarians
Learning mentors
Connexions personal advisers
Midday supervisors
Bursars / business managers
Administrative staff
Premises manager / staff
Catering staff
This list is not definitive and somewhat simplistic in approach bearing in mind the other forms of support that schools receive. This support includes part-time or occasional professional support from psychologists, speech therapist who have direct interventions with student learning and voluntary help from parents and school governors. What is evident is that the government literature on support staff focuses on paid employees directly working in the classroom. The HMI publication, Non-Teaching staff in Schools, (1992) even failed to consider the role and importance of Midday Meal Supervisors.
One of the challenges facing schools and the government is what term is used for professionals who work in schools that are not teachers; many of the phrases in current use carry negative connotations e.g. support staff, adults other than teachers or non teaching staff and do not acknowledge the positive contribution made by the individual to school. In some countries, for example, USA, Portugal and the Czech Republic they have extensive use of ‘paraprofessionals’ employed to support professionals (Kerry and Kerry 2002, Kerry, 2003). Kerry feels that the use of paraprofessional is a step towards according status to the post and postholder, yet it does not recognise the role and status for its own sake. There remains an inequality in how teachers and support staff are treated in schools. If the role was being considered as ‘professional’ in its own right then the standards that already exist could be applied nationally. The Common National Occupational Standards (LGNTO, 2001) have been devised for ‘all staff in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who work with teachers in classrooms supporting the learning process in primary, special and secondary schools’.
A key feature of the legislation relates to the role of teaching assistants (TA’s) and the introduction of the Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTA’s) qualification. The use of TAs in the classroom in England is not a new phenomenon (Balshaw 1991,1999, Clayton, 1990, Fletcher-Campbell, 1992; Lee and Mawson, 1998) and stems from the Plowden Report (Plowden 1967). In a prophetic way Lady Plowden identified the need that more support should be given to teachers to assist student learning. The Plowden report and the majority of research concerning TAs relates to those in Primary schools yet secondary and Special schools employ a significant number of support staff who impact on student learning. The intention of recent government initiatives is to give TAs more responsibility and this will impact on teachers working practice. It should be stressed that the TA role should not be a ‘teachers assistant’ but a ‘teaching assistant’ so that the role can be viewed in its own right. The TA role has developed in recent years studies in England during the 1990s (Clayton, 1990, Fletcher-Campbell, 1992; Moyles and Suschitzky, 1997) identifies that development of the governments inclusion agenda has led to the role of Special Educational Needs (SEN) assistant from working one-to-one with a pupil with special needs to supporting a special needs child within groups in a mainstream school. Clayton (1993:42) claims that there has been a major shift in the role of teaching assistants from care and housekeeping to a ‘substantial involvement in the learning process itself’. Research conducted by Wilson et al. (2003) investigated the perceptions of teachers and TAs in respect to how they spent their time in the classroom. They asked whether the relationships within the classroom had changed and identified a number of positive features.
To support the workforce reform initiative the Government in England funded two projects. Firstly, they commissioned research report,s for example the Management, role and training of Learning Support Assistants (Farrell et al., 1999) and secondly they selected ‘pathfinder’ schools to audit the roles of all staff in schools including support staff. The findings and outcomes have greatly influenced the Governments thinking on how support staff can be effectively deployed to support teachers and relieve them from non teaching tasks. Taken from the teachers’ perspective in terms of relieving them of their administrative burdens two issues immediately emerged, firstly, whether support staff saw their roles as adopting the areas teachers were to be relieved and how teachers regarded support staff undertaking what they saw as their roles. Regardless of these two key points the Government has gone forward with their modernisation agenda with most of the reforms for remodelling the workforce are scheduled to effect between September 2003 and September 2005 (appendix 2) to coincide with the relevant statutory instruments and changes to teacher’s contracts. To date 350 LEA remodelling champions having been trained by the National Remodelling Team. Each LEA has been asked to nominate one early adopter school to undertake an accelerated remodelling change programme and by mid 2004 182 nominations had been received (NGC,2004).
What schools have been asked to do to release the potential?
The National Remodelling Team (NRT), was established by the DfES within the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) to promote and progress the Government’s workforce remodelling agenda by supporting schools in the changes required. In finding solutions a significant step forward occurred when the Government, employers and the school workforce unions (except the National Union of Teachers) signed a National Agreement for Raising Standards and Tackling Workload on 15th January 2003. Regrettably, the NAHT has subsequently withdrawn their support for the agreement because they felt it has been insufficiently funded and therefore saw difficulties in fully implementing the initiative.