Teaching assistants can make a difference to pupils’ achievement, but schools must “fundamentally rethink their role”, academics have warned.
A new book – Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants – also says that TAs must receive “proper support” from their schools in order to be effective.
The book has been published by the team behind the five-year Deployment and Impact of Support Staff in schools (DISS) project at the Institute of Education in London.
In 2009, the study found that children who get the most help from TAs “consistently made less progress than similar pupils who received less TA support”. This was partly because these children, often with SEN, got less attention from teachers.
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