Teaching Assistant cuts

[OldBlueLady]

Absolute joke - without TAs in the classrooms these days schools would fall apart. I spent the whole of Thursday dealing with behavioural issues which no teacher would have had time to deal with. They can't have it both ways, they either want inclusivity or they don't - and if they want cut backs they'd do better to look at the ridiculous systems they have for awarding contracts for maintenance and building jobs. Something nicely quoted at £10k by the County's recommended provider (meaning we'd have to pay for it rather than them) actually cost £3k - it's all bureaucratic nonsense and if they just let us all get on with doing our jobs instead of bogging us down with more and more paperwork we'd all be a lot happier. All this on top of a sodding 1% rise! Bloody joke :madman:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090927/tuk-cutback-call-over-class-assistants-6323e80.html

 

[Pubey]

What do they do? I never had them when I was at school

 

[OldBlueLady]

What do they do? I never had them when I was at school

It varies, some are there dedicated to supporting a specific child with a statement of educational needs and are therefore, I believe, funded from outside. This can be for anything from autism or ADHD to a physical or cognitive disability, behavioural problems or even on a child protection matter. For instance, at my school, we have 350 pupils in 12 classes, I think we have 8 children with statements for specific and dedicated support but there are about another 80 or so children on School Action or School Action Plus for either educational or behavioural needs.

TAs are there to support children's learning, working with particular groups to "move them on" in the constant battle to improve on targets. In year 3, we might spend a lot of time working with children who have still not grasped phonics or simple addition, because for the teacher to deliver a lesson to "fit all" is incredibly hard at this age - you have some that are reading 4 or 5 years above their age and others who can barely write or read more than a-n-d.

Schools use them in different ways too, some use a TA in each class to support the class teacher, so that when they break into their groups (basically streaming) the TA works with whichever group the teacher wants, sometimes high ability, sometimes low.

As with everything else in education, there is reams of paperwork to complete and meetings to attend.

 

[shrimperman]

Although in essence, I agree with you, surely this is just a case of being more specific. You have Technicians to help with resources and practical work when necessary and LSA's (Learning Support Assistants) to assist SEN (Special Educational Needs) pupils. Am I just being a naive teacher, or will this just mean we get more LSA's and technicians rather than designating a TA?

 

[Vange Shrimper]

I dont have any LSA's or TA's in my class with me, or if I do, they turn up once in a blue moon.

I have 42 students on the SEN register, either being Statemented, School Action or School Action Plus in my 9 classes plus my form class and I have to deal with it myself.

One of my students has cerebral palsy and is also dyslexic but his LSA shows up once a month in my class. It hacks me off to a certain degree, because although I can teach them and they do the work without a LSA with them, the school gets x amount of money for LSA's and we dont even f*cking see them in my department!

 

[OldBlueLady]

Actually, that's a good point Hils, article doesn't differentiate whether it's talking about LSAs or TAs, and to be fair, as you say, it's the LSAs that support individual children (which is what my role is) - it's just that some schools call them all TAs!

Don't know how your school gets away with that, LSAs should be contracted as to the terms and needs of the child's statement.

And you don't get "Technicians" in KS1 or 2, except, maybe, for ICT. I just know what we have to manage, and that without our support, the teachers would be unable to teach as they'd be dealing with behaviour almost all day long. Some kids are really quite badly behaved these days, mind, when you see the behaviour of some of the parents it's not difficult to work out where they learn it from!

I have no idea why things are as they are these days, certainly when I was at school there were no TAs or LSAs either, but there didn't seem to be the huge variance in ability then either.

 

[A Century United]

I was a TA for a while. Cracking job, loved it* - and one of the better innovations of recent years. While I'm sure that some schools could use TA's/LSA's more efficiently cutting back on them would be a false economy.

*Rural school with 13 pupils and one teacher. And she needed a TA because it wasn't the numbers of pupils but having to teach 7 differentyear groups at the same time plus all the paperwork the Head would normally do.

 

[Emu]

And there was me looking for a TA job. Maybe i should start to put a plan B together!

Em.

 

[WestRoadShrimper]

I dont have any LSA's or TA's in my class with me, or if I do, they turn up once in a blue moon.

I have 42 students on the SEN register, either being Statemented, School Action or School Action Plus in my 9 classes plus my form class and I have to deal with it myself.

One of my students has cerebral palsy and is also dyslexic but his LSA shows up once a month in my class. It hacks me off to a certain degree, because although I can teach them and they do the work without a LSA with them, the school gets x amount of money for LSA's and we dont even f*cking see them in my department!

Students will only have an LSA follow them full time if they have a full statement, not just SA or SA+. Unfortunately, cerebral palsy and/or dyslexia are not enough to warrant a statement. In fairness, because SA and SA+ can be applied to such a wide range of things, 42 across 9 classes isn't really excessive - mind you, admittedly, depends what they're for. Our perfectly able and well behaved top set Yr11, for example, still has 3 kids in those categories.

And OBL, as far as reducing TA numbers, Ed Balls has already said he's got no intention of doing so. It was a leaked report bouncing ideas around to see where savings could be made. The bloke writing it had no education experience/background and was writing purely from an outsiders perspective. And even if the Tories come in, there's no way it'll happen then either.