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‘Compelling evidence’ to support teaching assistant deployment

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There is now a base of “compelling evidence” to ensure that the £4 billion spent on teaching assistants every year is used effectively, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has said.

It comes as the EEF published the results of two research trials involving teaching assistants and showing the positive impact that they can have on learning.

This brings to six the total number of trials that the EEF has funded – all of which have shown that teaching assistants can have a positive impact if deployed effectively.

The findings of the new trials will be added to the EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit, which pulls together research about a range of education interventions and shows their effectiveness against their cost.

The evidence from the six trials involving teaching assistants shows that the interventions resulted in an additional two to four months’ progress for the pupils involved.

The two new trials included one secondary intervention called REACH. This is led by teaching assistants and designed to improve the reading skills of struggling readers in years 7 and 8. The scheme involved one-to-one sessions with a teaching assistant three times a week for 20 weeks.

Two different versions of the programme – one focusing on pupils’ errors when reading aloud and one focusing on language comprehension training and the understanding of words – were evaluated by teams from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Ipsos MORI. The results revealed that both had a positive impact, delivering four and six months’ additional progress respectively.

Previous secondary research trials included a 10-week intervention for year 7 based on the Reading Recovery approach – this yielded an additional three months’ progress.

Meanwhile, a Talk for Literacy programme consisted of speaking and listening interventions delivered with year 7 pupils led by teaching assistants. This also resulted in an additional three months’ progress for pupils.

There are 240,000 teaching assistants working in the UK and the EEF’s key message to schools is that the traditional approaches to using teaching assistants, including as substitute teachers for low-attaining pupils, are not effective.
Sir Kevan Collins, EEF chief executive, is now urging schools to use the results from the six trials to inform their practice.

Sir Kevan said: “Teaching assistants have been much maligned in recent years and many schools have scaled back on their employment to cut costs. But these results prove that when they’re used to deliver small-group interventions, they can have a great impact on pupils’ attainment.

“With so many teaching assistants employed across the country, schools now have compelling evidence to make sure they’re using their own teaching assistants in ways that really improve results.”

The EEF has already launched a £5 million campaign centred on Making the Best Use of Teaching Assistants, a guidance report that provides seven practical and evidence-based recommendations for using teaching assistants.