Teaching assistants battle erupts

Special educational needs and disability (Send) campaigners are bracing themselves for a fight if the government tries to abolish teaching assistants.

A report in The Sunday Times said that the Treasury had proposed the phasing out of England’s 230,000 teaching assistants ahead of the spending review – a move that could save the government £4bn a year.

But SEND specialists argue that while reforms to classroom support are needed, getting rid of staff is not the answer.

The value of teaching assistants has been the subject of debate ever since an Institute for Education survey published in 2009 claimed: “Primary and secondary pupils supported by teaching assistants make less progress on average than those of similar ability, social class and gender who do not receive such assistance.”

Think-tanks, such as Reform, followed up that report with their own studies suggesting schools could improve value for money by cutting the helpers and using the savings to hire more qualified teachers. In February, an Ofsted report on the Pupil Premium reiterated the concern that “indiscriminate use of teaching assistants can represent very poor value for money”.

Effective deployment
Unison’s head of education, Jon Richards, agrees that teaching assistants must be effectively deployed. But he argues that more experienced Higher Level Training Assistants make a big difference for children with SEND. However, funding for this higher-level training was cut in 2010, he notes. In the same year, Education Secretary Michael Gove closed the School Support Staff Negotiating Body that set assistants’ pay.

“If they cut teaching assistants, there’s a danger teachers will have to do more and more things, and won’t be able to focus on teaching, which was the whole point of skilling up teaching assistants,” he says.

Unison’s own survey of teaching assistants published in January found more than 95 per cent of school leaders sa