Schools are beginning the new year facing a teacher shortage described by Ofsted chief inspector Mike Tomlinson as the worst he has seen in his 35-year career in education. However, an academic leading a major study on classroom assistants says that the practice of using support staff for teaching is masking the true extent of the crisis.
Dr Alan Marr of the Open University says headteachers are using support staff to 'cover over the cracks', and, further, that classroom assistants are being used instead of nursery nurses because they are paid less.
Dr Marr says, 'What is not being discussed in the context of the teacher shortage is the way in which primary school classroom assistants are covering a great deal of the shortage. The debate is all about supply teachers and teachers, particularly in secondary schools, working in specialities in which they are not qualified and the importation of foreign teachers.
'Classroom assistants are working extensively on their own with children, and that certainly applies to reception and nursery classes.'
This trend is all the more worrying from the point of view of the children's education, as there is a parallel trend to replace qualified nursery nurses with unqualified classroom assistants.
Dr Marr, whose study is to be published shortly, says, 'In one local authority we found there was quite extensive replacement of nursery nurses with classroom assistants because they are cheaper. The motivation is basically one of cost.'
The true picture of what is happening in the nation's schools is blurred as local management of schools means that the local authorities are not directly involved in recruitment. A survey a year ago by the National Union of Teachers found nearly half the primary schools with vacancies were having difficulty finding teachers. John Bangs, NUT head of education, says that the situation this September is even worse.
A more accurate and up-to-date snapshot might emerge in Ofsted's next annual report as Mr Tomlinson has instructed all Ofsted inspectors to include in their school reports details of staff vacancies, turnover and the number of supply teachers. But even then we might not know how often headteachers are resorting to using nursery nurses and classroom assistants to plug the teacher gaps.
Dr Marr's study found a fifth of teachers reporting that classroom assistants regularly work with whole classes on their own, while 76 per cent say classroom assistants work alone with groups of children. A survey 18 months ago by the Kirklees branch of Unison found that 68 per cent of nursery nurses had been left in charge of the classroom.
Brunni de la Motte, Unison's national officer for education, says, 'We can only imagine the situation has got worse. Nursery nurses are having to take on the role of teachers when they are not qualified or paid for it. Now we have the Government saying we need to have teachers in day nurseries, but what impact will that have on the teacher shortage?' Gill Mason, manager of the Merseyside Accredited Centre for Childcare Training and Assessment, who teaches the early years NVQ Level 3 to classroom assistants, says many assistants report being left to take the whole class by themselves.
'Some of them are very happy to do it because they like taking the responsibility. But the real question should be: is it right? I don't think it is, because they are not qualified.'
Mr Tomlinson says he expects to see an increase in 'mismatch', the practice of using teachers to teach subjects for which they are unqualified. One educationalist believes this practice should alarm the early years sector more than the use of nursery nurses in a teaching role.
'People worry about nursery nurses taking over a teaching role. At least they have the specialist training, knowledge and day-to-day experience of working with very young children. You can call in a supply teacher and find they only have secondary experience and have no idea about the needs of very young children.'
Brunni de la Motte adds, 'We have a lot of nursery nurses telling us that they have to tell the teacher what to do when they have a teacher in charge who is not an early years specialist.'
Mr Bangs argues that apart from any impact this might have on the children's education, there could be delays in identifying and responding to vulnerable children. 'If you want to prompt a multi-agency response to a child you feel is at risk, you as a teacher know how to do that, whom to contact and what to do. The teacher has the status and authority to do that. It is a teacher's responsibility.'
There are predictions that the problems will get worse this autumn. Professor John Howson, visiting professor of education at Oxford Brookes University, says that the cash incentive offered by the Government to encourage people back into teaching has drained the pool of supply teachers. 'After half-term when people start getting ill, there will be no-one to cover for them.'
