Before we step any further, I don’t want to be accused of being anti-TA, especially when I have vociferously spoken out quite publicly about the benefits of teaching assistants for a school.
The teaching assistant debate, sparked by research into their effectiveness, gave schools the false impression that teaching assistants were not worth much. My argument, both then and now, is that it has nothing to do with teaching assistants themselves and everything to do with how they are trained, strategically deployed and line managed.
Their varying quality and positive or negative impact on student outcomes is only usually as good as the extent to which they are managed and the quality of the person thinking about how best to use them – which is nearly always the SENCO.
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