Teaching assistants (TAs) improve classroom discipline and reduce teachers' stress levels and workload but fail to boost pupils' progress, according to the largest-ever study on the impact of support staff in schools.
Indeed, the research team from the Institute of Education at London University found the more support pupils received, the less progress they actually made.
TAs usually work with children needing the most help, which means these pupils spend less time being taught by their teacher.
Since 1997 the school workforce has grown by nearly 50 per cent. There are now 441,300 teachers, a rise of 10 per cent, and 183,200 teaching assistants, a threefold increase. An Audit Commission report in June questioned the huge rise, arguing that research was needed to justify spending so much on TAs, particularly in a recession.
The Institute of Education study, 'The deployment and impact of support staff in schools', commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, compared the impact of TA support on pupil progress in English, mathematics and science, in 2005-06 and 2007-08 using test scores of more than 8,000 primary and secondary pupils in England and Wales. The research team, led by Professor Peter Blatchford, focused on children from Year 1 upwards and also observed lessons and interviewed staff.
The report concluded, 'There was a consistent negative relationship between the amount of support a pupil received and the progress they made in English and mathematics and also at wave 2 in science, even after controlling for pupil characteristics like prior attainment and SEN status. The more support pupils received, the les progress they made.'
Remodelling the Workforce
The findings call into question the effectiveness of the Government's programme to remodel the school workforce by reducing pupil-adult ratios and cutting the workload on teachers through increasing the ranks of support staff.
While a DCSF spokesman acknowledges that the most effective deployment of TAs is patchy, he insists there are measures in place to address these issues.
'The research is clear that the increase in support staff has reduced teacher workloads, made their jobs more productive and positively affected the learning and behaviour of pupils they work with - which mirrors Ofsted's finding that workforce remodelling has created a "revolutionary shift in the culture of the school workforce".
'It's counter-intuitive to say that support staff do not affect pupil progress. There is clear evidence that there is a positive impact where teaching assistants are trained and effectively deployed to deliver specific support programmes, alongside well-planned lessons, as this research acknowledges.'
Professor Blatchford believes that problems arise from the way TAs are deployed, as most teachers have no training in managing their support staff or allocated time for planning and feedback with them.
He says, 'While TAs are extremely dedicated - many work extra hours without pay - their routine deployment to pupils most in need seems to be the heart of the problem.
'The problems we have identified are not only about the training and practice of individual TAs, but about decisions taken concerning how they are deployed and prepared. It's not their fault! Attending to TA training is only part of the solution if we do not address the wider context within which they work.
'The main problem seems to be that TAs are often left to do the best they can with the pupils they are asked to support. We need to work through what is expected of TAs when interacting with pupils.
'There seems to have been a kind of collective denial that TAs are in effect teaching.'
The report notes, 'Lower attaining pupils and those with SEN are likely to have hard-to-diagnose and complex difficulties, but in many cases such pupils were routinely taught for much of their time by TAs, not teachers.
'The systematic observation analysis showed that as pupils had more contact with support staff, they had less interaction with teachers; in this sense, support staff provided alternative, rather than additional support.'
Wake-up Call
Christina McAnea, head of education at public services union Unison, says, 'This survey is the wake-up call that schools, local authorities and the government need to make sure they are deploying staff effectively.
'It's obvious that children with complex needs will require the most support from qualified teachers, yet too often they experience the reverse of this.
'Interestingly, the report also highlights that when TAs are taken on for a specific task such as literacy, they can make a difference.
'Unison has been calling for better pay, training and more paid time for school support staff for many years. Cover supervisors and teaching assistants are not substitutes for teachers, but what they can do, given the right training and support, is help children with special needs to get the most out of school.'
Tricia Pritchard, senior professional officer with the union Voice, adds, 'Teaching teams can work fantastically well together. I would hate anybody to interpret from this piece of research that it doesn't work across the board, because there really is some excellent partnership working. I would hate this to impact negatively on that.
'Gone are the days when the support staff were there to mop up after a child had an accident or to help clear away the paint pots, but I think there are some teachers who still see support staff in that role.
'From our experience with our members, when problems arise teachers are not consistent in how they treat support staff and have no great expectations of them. We are representing members when clearly the relationship between the support staff and the teachers has broken down, and we quite often find there is no diarised time for discussion and feedback between them.'
Gillian Bainbridge, head teacher of Montalbo Nursery and Primary School in Barnard Castle, Co Durham, has nothing but praise for her support staff. 'We can all use the excuse that there is not time. But if something is important to you then you will make that time,' she says. 'I haven't got people who are jobsworths who say things like "I am on my break now". They all go the extra mile. If you feel valued, that is what you do.
'The support staff in our Foundation Stage are second to none. It is the team spirit and the fact they feel valued. That is part of the ethos of the school. Everybody is a cog in the wheel. It doesn't matter what position you have in the school - everybody has an input to make it better.'
Positive Effects
The report notes that studies which have examined the effect of support staff 'when they are prepared and trained for specific curricular interventions, with support and guidance from the teacher and school about practice, tend to show positive effects on pupil progress.'
In contrast, this study, looking at the effect of the level of support on everyday classroom working, raises concerns about the TA's lack of preparedness and the way pupils can become separated from the teacher by spending so much time with the support staff.
The Government's goal is for TAs to be qualified to Level 3. But the report found only 35 per cent of support staff had qualifications above GCSE, and 'there was a statistical tendency for support staff to be less qualified over time.
'The case studies revealed that the majority of comments concerning preparedness showed TAs and cover supervisors felt under-prepared for their roles, picking up subject and pedagogical knowledge by "tuning in" to the teachers' delivery,' said the researchers.
'Cover supervisors described going into lessons "blind". Teachers were often detached from the planning and preparation of the intervention sessions that they delegated to TAs.'
Perhaps understandably, TAs also tended to be more concerned than teachers with the completion of tasks rather than the learning and understanding of the children.
Training Needed
'In some ways this report reconfirms all that we have said,' says Christine Lewis, Unison's national officer for education. 'You cannot pull in a member of the support staff to substitute for a teacher without giving them proper training. They have to have appropriate training, they have got to have qualifications at the right level, and there has to be a controlled environment for them to work in.
'A lot of schools now have lessons on their intranet and support staff will have a lesson downloaded and given to them to teach. Support staff are being put into classrooms with no materials.
'The Government wanted to have apprenticeships for support staff, but one of the reasons these apprenticeships have not taken off is that their terms and conditions are too lousy.'
FURTHER INFORMATION
- 'The deployment and impact of support staff in schools' can be found at ww.dcsf.gov.uk/research/programmeofresearch/index.cfm?type+5&k
- See also www.ioe.ac.uk/newsEvents/31191.html
