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It’s official: school budget cuts have finally caught up with teaching assistants

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 28 June 2018

Rob Webster
The latest school workforce statistics, released by the Dept for Education, confirm what survey after survey have been telling us for months: schools are losing their TAs.
The government started publishing school workforce data 21 years ago. This is the first time the annual count of TAs has been lower than the previous year. The downward trend observed in secondary schools has reached primary and nursery settings – where 67% of England’s TA workforce are based – tipping the overall balance.
The table below summarises (more…)

The freedom to make decisions about teaching assistants is nothing new, but now school leaders have the means to unlock their potential

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 27 February 2015

Rob Webster
Over the last five years, schools in England have been granted an unprecedented level of freedom. An increasing number of state schools now decide for themselves which children are admitted, the curriculum they follow, who to appoint to teach it, and how much they will be paid.
The professional architecture governing teachers’ qualifications and training, performance management, promotion, pay, contracts and conditions of work has been loosened in ways that will already be familiar to the 369,700 teaching assistants (TAs) employed in English schools.
There has never been agreement on entry qualifications for TAs, consistently applied professional standards, or a national (more…)