Conducting an audit of your teaching assistant provision

Before we step any further, I don’t want to be accused of being anti-TA, especially when I have vociferously spoken out quite publicly about the benefits of teaching assistants for a school.

The teaching assistant debate, sparked by research into their effectiveness, gave schools the false impression that teaching assistants were not worth much. My argument, both then and now, is that it has nothing to do with teaching assistants themselves and everything to do with how they are trained, strategically deployed and line managed (nearly always by the SENCO).

I know from first-hand experience and strongly advocate that teaching assistants can be the best financial investment for a school. However, the wrong/ineffective deployment of teaching assistants can be a serious impediment to a student’s progress. When a teaching assistant is deployed without sufficient training, without weekly line management support and with no regular measure of impact, then the research has shown, and we all know from personal experience, that the teaching assistant is likely to be getting in the way of learning, let alone promoting curriculum engagement.