Working with TAs

This set of resources supports Heads of department and classroom teachers in working effectively with TAs, and accompanies the Triple Science Support guide Working with teaching assistants.

The Triple Science Support intervention guides and supporting resources are packed full of ideas and examples of evidence-based good practice, and will support you in going beyond short term, bolt on interventions to look at issues such as progression, tracking progress and how best to structure learning so students gain a deep, long term understanding of the science.

This book provides a number of practical approaches to develop Teaching Assistants' knowledge and understanding of Science, and many classroom activities to support learners in the Science classroom.

Quality AssuredCategory:SciencePublisher:Centre for Science Education

Using a camera in the classroom can make the curriculum more accessible for SEN students. Teaching assistants can provide invaluable support for many of these ideas, as well as taking the photos!

In March 2015 the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) published this Guidance Report for teachers and school leaders. Previous research had shown that in many English schools teaching assistants are not being used in ways that improve pupil outcomes. However, recent research demonstrates that when they are well trained and used in structured settings with high-quality support and training, teaching assistants can make a noticeable positive impact on pupil learning.

The report makes seven evidence-based recommendations to help schools maximise the impact of teaching assistants, including:

Use TAs to add value to what teachers do, not to replace them
Ensure TAs are fully prepared for their role in the classroom
Use TAs to deliver high-quality one-to-one and small group support using structured interventions

The supporting resources are also useful:

Self Assessment Guide

Interventions Health Check

Summary of 7 recommendations

TAs_slide_stack_detailed.pptx

Quality AssuredCategory:SciencePublisher:Department for Education

The materials in this National Strategies resource help teaching assistants to develop their role in supporting assessment for learning (AfL) in the classroom by promoting and embedding good practice in partnership with teachers.

Throughout the resource, teaching assistants reflect on and evaluate their role and identify areas for professional development. They look at existing practice in assessment for learning in their school, reviewing existing practice and reflecting on learning outcomes. The emphasis is on looking at how teaching assistants can improve their knowledge and practice in supporting AfL.

This study guide contains:
• quotes and suggestions from teaching assistants who have trialled some of the suggested ideas
• ‘reflections’, to help teaching assistants to reflect on an idea or on their own practice
• practical tips
• tasks to help consider advice or try out strategies in the classroom
• some suggestions for next steps and further reading.

The Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA) role was introduced to reinforce and improve the skills of school support staff, allowing them to take on additional responsibilities and in doing so raise standards and reduce teacher workload. This is the first major research study of the deployment and impact of support staff who have achieved HLTA status.

Key Findings:

Both HLTAs and senior leaders felt the HLTA role was having a positive impact on supporting pupil learning.
Almost three-quarters of senior leaders (73 per cent) indicated that the HLTA role had reduced teacher workload, at least to some extent.
Almost three quarters (74 per cent) of HLTAs thought that achieving HLTA status had led to increased confidence/self-esteem.

This is a summary of the DISS report by Rob Webster and Peter Blatchford, Institute of Education, University of London.

The Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) project, was the largest ever study of teaching assistants which was set up to describe the characteristics and deployment of teaching assistants (and other school support staff), and to address, for the first time, their impact on teachers, teaching and pupils: Blatchford, P., Russell, A., Webster. (2012) Reassessing the impact of teaching assistants: How research challenges practice and policy. Oxon: Routledge.

This book examines the impact of TAs on pupils’ learning and behaviour, and on teachers and teaching. The authors present the provocative findings from the ground-breaking and seminal Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) project. This was the largest, most in-depth study ever to be carried out in this field. It critically examined the effect of TA support on the academic progress of 8,200 pupils, made extensive observations of nearly 700 pupils and over 100 TAs, and collected data from over 17,800 questionnaire responses and interviews with over 470 school staff and pupils.

This book reveals the extent to which the pupils in most need are let down by current classroom practice. The authors present a robust challenge to the current widespread practices concerning TA preparation, deployment and practice, structured around a conceptually and empirically strong explanatory framework. The authors go on to show how schools need to change if they are to realise the potential of TAs.

Page 14 of this report gives examples of where inspectors saw teaching assistants being used most effectively in schools. Where the teaching assistants who were employed using Pupil Premium funding were most effective in helping to improve pupils’ achievement, schools had:

ensured that they thoroughly understood their role in helping to improve achievement
trained their teaching assistants well to fulfil this role, and kept the training up to date
extended or revised the teaching assistants’ hours to enable them to work with teachers to plan and review pupils’ learning
placed the teaching assistants where data indicated that they were most needed to help pupils to catch up, rather than spreading them evenly among classes
deployed the teaching assistants well to maximise their strengths with different subjects and age groups.