Time stands still

Back in June, I had just boarded the train back to Liverpool Central after providing a workshop to 26 PGCE students entitled ‘How to work effectively with your TA’. It was a 45-minute workshop and I ran out of time! I have so much more to tell them. Enthusiastic, fresh and ready to begin their journey into the classroom.  

My mind drifted back to a point in the workshop where I used a video from Oxford University Press to share research findings of how TAs are deployed in classrooms, recorded in 2013. Disappointingly the OUP findings of unprepared TAs, less able pupils making less progress, activities occurring outside classrooms with TAs not feeding back to teachers, questioning and TAs always working with SEN or lower attaining pupils are precisely what the graduate students were sharing from their recent teaching practices. Quotes from the students included:

‘ I asked the TA to so an activity on perimeter and she taught them area.’

‘My TA would walk around with a rubber and rub work out, telling the pupil what to write instead.’

‘Teachers writing reams of notes for TAs instead of verbal discussions and preparation’

‘Poor marking from TAs’

20% of the PGCE group had not heard of the Code of Practice, yet  90% had working with TAs daily for a sustained period of time. Who is teaching the new teachers how to deploy a TA well.  

The graduates mentioned that there was no money to train the TAs-I’ve heard that too many times. Although, it’s not just the TAs-what about the teachers and leaders being trained in how to deploy TAs effectively? So are school leaders wasting money employing individuals not able to do their jobs well if they are poorly deployed and not invested in? 

A colleague at the conference asked me what I thought about TAs often being recruited from within the community. She felt if this community consisted of high disadvantage, then may be the TA had a poor education. She felt this may result in their use of language being of an inadequate standard to model to pupils. She feels, and there is research to support this view, that if you can’t talk properly, you can’t write properly. I said the recruitment process should be more robust. Or subsequent training may be needed-INVEST!! 

If the models of effective use of TAs from the OUP, EEF, MITA and many others all refer to Quality First Teaching then why would this be an issue anyway?

Is the problem less about TA deployment and more about a lack of skill and understanding surrounding Quality First Teaching, when it comes to including the previously low attaining pupils and pupils with complex needs?