New toolkit highlights positive impact of teaching assistants

UNISON has never doubted the hugely positive impact that teaching assistants (TAs) make in schools, whether in pupil attainment, pastoral support or enabling teachers to focus on teaching. Indeed, every year UNISON’s Stars in Our Schools’ celebrations collect hundreds of examples of their extraordinary work. But, for a long time, little independent research was carried out examining their impact. Indeed a toolkit produced by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), a leading independent organisation that focuses on research in education, even claimed that, while TAs bring value to school communities, they did not make significant improvements to pupils’ educational progress. As a union for TAs, with a wealth of its own findings to the contrary, UNISON met with EEF and raised significant concerns about this message. Citing examples such as a survey of school leaders, where 95% headteachers said that TAs added value to learning and appreciated their role in structured and targeted interventions, UNISON highlighted the decimation of government funding for support staff training and development and called for more detailed research to be done. Now, after answering UNISON’s call, the EEF has updated its Teaching and Learning Toolkit. The toolkit covers 30 approaches for improving learning outcomes, such as the use of feedback, reducing class size and TA interventions. Each strand is summarised by its average impact on attainment, the strength of the evidence and its cost....
Source: UNISON meat hygiene - Category: Food Science Authors: Tags: Article schools teaching assistants Source Type: news