The training I received as a classroom assistant was a three-hour session once a week on theory and three hours a week in the classroom with children, over nine months.
In both jobs I felt I had not been trained adequately, and that my training had barely skimmed the surface of the needs of children. We never spoke about strategies to deal with children's behaviour, nor were we taught about child development.
Does Estelle Morris, the education secretary, really think classroom assistants are adequately trained to take charge of a class in the teacher's absence? I started the full-time, two-year diploma course in order to get a better qualification, but I am left wondering if I am wasting my time as qualified childcare and education workers with the NNEB seem forgotten and undervalued.
Mary Madigan Feltham, Middlesex
