"Stop vilifying teaching assistants" says union

Academic research is being misused by the media to attack teaching assistants, according to the public service union Unison.
Two big research reports published last week both point to the need for support staff to be properly trained and paid for the work they do. And they highlight the problems created when schools expect them to fill roles they are not qualified to fill.

But some press reports have used the research to denegrate teaching assistants, and their contribution to children's education.
Christine McAnea, Unison's head of education, said, “As a key member of the education team, teaching assistants (TAs) have a very valuable role to play in delivering high quality education for children. They are not teachers – they don’t have the same training or access to ongoing support and certainly don’t get paid the same.
“Recent reports from the Institute of Education and London Metropolitan University highlight two sides of the same problem – that too many headteachers are exploiting low paid support staff. But this is being used by some as an excuse to blame dedicated and hard-working teaching assistants and indeed the whole school remodelling programme in general."
Unison is calling for better pay, training and more paid time for teaching assistants to do their jobs, and backs the Government's plan to train all learning support staff to Level 3.