The research, conducted by the Institute of Education on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), found that pupils who were supported by a teaching assistant made less progress in school than their peers who received no support.
The more assistance pupils received, the less well they progressed academically.
Professor Blatchford, who led the research, blamed a lack of proper teacher training for the problem. He said less than a quarter of teacher know how to work effectively with teaching assistants.
He said: "The reasons why pupils have this support in the first place - lower achievement, learning and behaviour difficulties, social class - have all been accounted for in the analysis, so we cannot say that pupil characteristics are the cause of their slower progress."
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