A study carried out by the Open University for the Economic and Social Research Council, led by Dr Alan Marr of the Open University and due to be published shortly, has found marked differences in practice north and south of the border. Whereas in England and Wales, classroom assistants' roles have developed in an ad hoc way, in Scotland they have a more clearly defined set of responsibilities. The study found that this was because the role of the classroom assistant in Scotland had been agreed at policy level following discussions between the leading teaching union the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Scottish Executive and local authorities.
In England and Wales a fifth of teachers say classroom assistants regularly work with whole classes on their own, while 76 per cent reported assistants' involvement in the assessment of children's work.
The draft report on the ESRC/OU Primary Classroom Assistants Project argues that the boundary between the work of teachers and classroom assistants is 'increasingly blurred'.
The Government's guidance south of the border on classroom assistant activity in literacy and numeracy has accelerated the move from classroom assistants having an unacknowledged, indirect role in the teaching process to having a direct role, the report argues. It says that classroom assistants' pay is often less than 5 an hour and their contracts are insecure, and calls for an immediate debate about their terms and conditions.
The study points out that changing or blurring the definitions of teachers' and classroom assistants' roles, or changing their job titles, could help the Government to meet targets on performance and class sizes despite the recruitment crisis in the teaching profession. One indication of this, it says, is the way that references to adult:pupil ratios have replaced teacher: pupil ratios in official statements.
The draft report says, 'In Scotland it will be solely the teacher's responsibility to work educatively with the children, while in England and Wales the teacher looks likely to become the "manager of learning" within the classroom as wider educative roles are divested to other adults.'
