Two new reports looking at school workforce remodelling and the role of support staff raise concerns about whether the huge increase in teaching assistant numbers is proving beneficial for children (see News, page 3, and Analysis, pages 10-11).
One effect is that support staff are standing in for absent teachers for worryingly long periods of time. This many not be surprising - they are readily available, and it saves on supply teachers! This is not their job, however, and is unlikely to lead to satisfactory outcomes.
However, even where teachers are present, the Institute of Education's research found that the more 'support' pupils received, the less progress they made. Although this sounds counter-intuitive, it arises from the children most in need of help actually spending less time with the teacher and more with an assistant - a substitution for teaching expertise, not an addition to it.
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