The majority of research has taken place in the UK (most notably from Blatchford and Webster) and the USA (Giangreco). Much of this research took place pre-pandemic and new issues and ways of working triggered by the lockdowns/pandemic need some level of further research.
The policy debate in the UK has been shaped by three particular sources of evidence:
DISS (Deployment and Impact of Support Staff) Study (2009)
This study aimed to provide an accurate, systematic and representative description of types of support staff; their characteristics and deployment; how they have changed over time; and analysed the impact of support staff on teaching, learning and behaviour.
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An overarching finding was that the more support pupils received from support staff, the less progress they made in maths, science and English.
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TAs tended to focus more on completing tasks than on pupils’ learning and understanding. Teachers did not do this.
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Teachers felt that support staff reduced their workload and stress, increased job satisfaction and increased the amount of 1-to-1 attention they could give to pupils.
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Routinely attaching a TA to a child resulted in those pupils becoming cut off from the curriculum, the teacher and their peers.
EDTA (Effective Deployment of Teaching Assistants) Project (2011)
This project aimed to develop and evaluate school based strategies for the effective deployment of TAs. The results were organised into three categories:
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Preparedness – creating time for teachers and TAs to meet had a positive effect on the quality of TA input and helped make their roles more explicit.
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Deployment – senior leadership and teachers thought more strategically about how TAs could ‘add value’ to, rather than replace, the teachers role.
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Practice – TA roles developed to support changes in their talk with pupils (e.g. questioning to support independence); their role in supporting learning and understanding; and in formative assessment.
MaSt (Making a Statement) Project (2011-2013)
This project was designed to discover the overall support experienced by SEN pupils in mainstream schools. The results were:
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Pupils in mainstream with SEN Statements spent over a quarter of their time away from the class, the teacher and their peers.
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The quality pedagogical experiences were of a lower quality than for average attaining pupils.
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Gaps were found in the knowledge of both teachers and TAs in meeting needs of pupils with SEN.
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Schools lacked an effective pedagogy for teaching pupils with SEND in mainstream.
The results of these studies contributed to the large reforms to SEND that were enshrined into legislation in September 2014 in the form the Children and Families Act (Part 3) and the accompanying SEND Code of Practice (updated Jan 2015).
SENSE (Special Educational Needs in Education) Study (2017) [1]
This study built on the MaST project, tracking the experiences primary pupils with Statements and EHCPs. The conclusions drawn were:
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School leaders need to make the learning of pupils with SEND a strategic priority to rethink the role of TAs with regard to SEND.
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The systemic use of TAs is compensating/covering failures relating to teacher training, task planning, and broader attempts to make teaching more inclusive.
MITA (Maximising the Impact of TAs)(2021) [2]
This independent evaluation found that school who undertook the MITA programme improved how TAs were deployed and prepared for their classroom roles and had a positive impact on pupil engagement.. The approach is founded on the view that the most effective way to deploy TAs in the classroom is to support the development of pupils’ non-academic skills.
Systematic Reviews:
A systematic review undertaken in 2009 (Alborz et al.) built upon a similar review in 2003 and found that few studies looked at support staff other than TAs and most addressed TAs supporting students with additional needs in primary schools. The study looked at different impacts although it states that most studies looked at the impact on learning. It summarises that well trained TAs are needed (particularly effective for literacy); team work and small group work is most effective use of a TA; and that a TA should not normally exclusively work 1-to-1 with pupils with SEND. TAs need to be part of the school team and their contributions valued.
A further systematic analysis (Sharma & Salend, 2016) gives an examination of more recent research, from an international perspective. Its conclusions back up previous results and hence show that problems continue to exist. It also looks at where further research is needed and suggests that further data sources are needed as well as studies of students who do not have learning disabilities. Interesting, it notes that no research on how parents advocate the use of TAs exists and is therefore needed.
Further issues:
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Schools are using 1-to-1 as a default as they are not confident addressing needs in other ways (Webster, 2014).
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Parents are demanding 1-to-1 support as the only way of meeting their child’s needs to attend a mainstream school (Webster, 2014).
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An effective alternative to the 1-to-1 model is the TAAF (Teacher As A Facilitator) model (Butt, 2016) in which TAs move around classrooms supporting all students allowing the teacher to work more closely with pupils with SEND.
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Issues with role clarity/ ‘creep’ – noted that few schools had policies on TA deployment.(Blatchford, 2012).
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School structures (e.g policies such as setting, availability of resources, etc.) have an important influence (Florian and Rouse. 2001) that can impede knowledgeable staff implementing effective inclusive learning techniques.
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Better inclusion depends on improving our understanding of the lives and work of teaching assistants (Webster, 2021) [3]
Advice from the Education Endowment Foundation (2015) [4]
This advice contains 7 recommendations on how to effectively deploy TAs, based upon the best research evidence available at the time, as well as clear diagrams (e.g. a grid on higher-order questioning skills) that could be put to good practical use by TAs:
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The first two are very similar – do not use TAs as an informal teaching resource for low-attaining pupils (1), but instead to add value to what teachers do (2).
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(3)TAs need to help pupils develop independent learning skills.
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(4)TAs need to be fully prepared for their role in the classroom.
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(5)TAs should be used to deliver high-quality 1-to-1 and small group interventions based on (6) evidence-based interventions.
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(7) explicit connections need to be made between every day classroom learning and structured interventions.
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Quality of teaching is the single most important driver of pupil attainment and a range of other positive outcomes. Maximising the quality of teaching through the effective deployment and development of teachers and teaching assistants will therefore be at the top of any school’s priorities.
Further Practical Advice:
- Whole School SEND includes many resources, including from commissioning TA Reviews – a school-to-school peer review process. Nb. It does need to be paid for – price is negotiated. Schools are expected to self-evaluate prior to a review and include policies (e.g. TA deployment policy) in this evaluation. The resource contains templates that a school can use in their self-evaluation. [5]
- The Education Endowment Foundation commissions research and publishes evidence of its evaluations. These can be found here:
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/teaching-assistants/ https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-blog-the-impact-of-teaching-assistants-a-holistic-picture
- UNISON commissioned work from UCL
- DfE advice
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/812507/Deployment_of_teaching_assistants_report.pdf
Footnotes:
[1] https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/152465
[2] https://maximisingtas.co.uk/impact.php
[3] https://world-education-blog.org/2021/04/21/why-the-drive-to-inclusion-depends-on-improving-our-understanding-of-the-lives-and-work-of-teaching-assistants/
[4] Due to be updated in 2023, no major changes anticipated.
[5] https://www.wholeschoolsend.org.uk/resources/teaching-assistant-deployment-review-guide