Torbay LG Branch - Schools Portal

UNISON, the UK's leading public sector trade union and the main union
for school support staff today called for respect for teaching
assistants (TA's) and other school support staff, and for them to be
given proper pay, training and support to do their jobs.

UNISON Head of Education, Christina McAnea, 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.

"It's a pity that some more details, also in the research, didn't
attract as much attention. Such as: headteachers have complete freedom
to decide who can and can't be left in charge of children; there is no
requirement for a minimum qualification or training level; there is no
right to training or continued professional development (CPD) for
support staff; most TAs are employed on an hourly contract usually only
paid for the time children are actually in a classroom (some schools
have cut hours to exclude lunch and break times), so there is no time to
plan, prepare or discuss issues with teachers resulting unsurprisingly
in a huge increase in the amount of unpaid overtime done by these low
paid staff."

UNISON says support staff have a key role to play, and schools which
have properly and fairly remodelled can and do reflect this. The union
is calling on the new national School Support Staff Negotiating Body to
address these issues and for schools to have clear policies and
practices to ensure TAs and other staff are deployed fairly and
effectively, so they can have maximum positive impact on children and
their families.