“My role has become increasingly one of cover for absent teachers in my department. Last year about 50% of my time was spent doing this.” Secondary higher level teaching assistant
“I have been given a teaching timetable. Some was to cover maternity leave, some to fill a gap where a teacher had left, and no one had been recruited to fill the space.” Secondary cover supervisor
“The pupils are missing out on the teaching they deserve. The pupils effectively suffer by not having access to qualified teachers. Their parents are completely unaware of the situation.” Secondary teaching assistant
Teaching assistants covering lessons for teachers is nothing new.
However, after years of real-terms cuts to school funding that make supply an expensive luxury, after a pandemic which demanded even more from teaching assistants, and with a teacher recruitment and retention crisis leaving schools short-staffed, our members are increasingly raising concerns about the amount of cover they are being asked to take on.
Until now, little – if any – research has been carried out into how much cover for teachers was going on in our schools, as well as the reasons why and the impact.
That is why UNISON recently commissioned research into the extent and impact of teaching assistants being deployed to cover classes.
The report, entitled Teaching on the Cheap? (Webster, 2024), is based on survey responses from almost 6,000 teaching assistants working in both mainstream and special schools across England and Wales.
Around 17% of all teaching assistants work in secondary settings, and for this article I want to focus on what they had to tell us. The findings are revealing.
The study shows that 52% of secondary teaching assistants cover for up to two hours a week, while 22% cover three to four hours, and 11% cover five to seven hours. A shocking 9% cover more than 11 hours a week.
Why is this? Well 51% of the secondary teaching assistants in the study report covering classes because the school simply does not have enough teachers (compared to 24% at primary level).
A further 42% cover classes because the school cannot, or does not, get in supply teachers (25% at primary).
And 32% cover classes because of teacher absence due to long-term sickness (10% at primary).
When it comes to lesson plans, 35% of secondary teaching assistants said that they are given lesson plans often or always, while another 35% said they are rarely or never given a plan.
The report also finds that the distinction between “cover” and “specified work” generally does not play-out on the ground, and that to all intents and purposes teaching assistants are “teaching” classes when they cover a lesson.
For teaching assistants, providing cover can be especially stressful because they are often the only adult in the room, with no additional support.
Indeed, 67% of the teaching assistants said they rarely or never have extra support in the classes they cover; 60% reported that when covering classes their normal role/duties are never backfilled. Indeed, just 2% said that this happened.
I don’t need to tell you that teaching assistants have an important role in the classroom – working with individuals or small groups, supporting behaviour management, keeping pupils on task, facilitating inclusion, and providing targeted support to children with SEND or additional learning needs.
When we deploy teaching assistants to cover classes, we divert them from the work that delivers the greatest impact.
As a result, the secondary teaching assistants in the study told us that pupils are missing out on classroom support (51%) and intervention sessions (35%), while young people with an Education, Health and Care Plan or Individual Education Plan are missing out on one-to-one support (49%).
Ultimately, 73% of the secondary teaching assistants said that covering classes has a negative impact on the quality of learning in their school, while 81% said that it does likewise for provision for pupils with SEND.
As for the impact on the teaching assistants themselves, 85% say that cover has a negative impact on their workload; 82% say the same for their health and wellbeing – covering at short notice is a particular cause of stress and anxiety.
And of course, very few are being paid for the additional responsibilities they take on – just 24% told us that they are paid an uplift for covering classes. And when they do receive remuneration, it ranges from as little as 20p to £3 per hour.
The upshot is, fuelled by the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, teaching assistants are carrying out more cover than ever before in a much wider range of circumstances than prescribed by the 2003 National Agreement.
The report has some recommendations to help address the issues it raises.
The first is to prioritise support for teaching assistants covering lessons, although it is acknowledged that this may cause disruption to other classes and provision.
The second is to protect intervention timetables and the teaching assistants who are trained to deliver them, so that pupils do not lose vital opportunities to build their basic literacy and numeracy skills.
More widely, the use of teaching assistants to cover classes is symptomatic of a chronically underfunded education system. Schools are resorting to desperate measures because they lack the funding to hire sufficient numbers of qualified teachers or source the necessary supply teachers. In many subjects at secondary level there simply aren’t enough teachers.
Plugging the gaps with teaching assistants is not fair or sustainable. The key to resolving this is for the government to ensure that all schools have the budget and staff to provide the education children are entitled to.
At the same time, UNISON is calling for a new national strategy for teaching assistants, including updating the National Agreement and role profiles to reflect their contribution and to ensure that all support staff are paid appropriately for the work they do.
- Joanna Parry is national officer for education and children's services at UNISON. Visit www.unison.org.uk/education. Read her previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/joanna-parry
Further information & resources
- Webster: Teaching on the cheap? How deploying teaching assistants to cover for teachers is compromising their value and impact, UNISON, 2024: www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2024/04/Teaching-on-the-cheap.pdf