Anthony Russell

Double standards and first principles: framing teaching assistant support for pupils with special educational needs

Teaching assistants (TAs) are part of a growing international trend toward paraprofessionals working in public services. There has been controversy over TAs’ deployment and appropriate role when supporting the learning of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream schools. Such debates have been transformed by findings from a large study of school support staff in the UK (the DISS project). The findings from this study show that TA support has a negative impact on pupils’ academic progress, especially pupils with SEN. The findings render the current system of support for SEN highly questionable: TAs have inadvertently become the primary educators of pupils with SEN. This paper sets out the likely explanations for the negative effects in terms of three ‘frames’ – deployment, practice and preparedness – and then uses these frames to identify specific implications for pupils with SEN. We offer suggestions on how to make the most productive use of TA support.

The role and effects of teaching assistants in English primary schools (Years 4 to 6) 2000–2003. Results from the Class Size and Pupil–Adult Ratios (CSPAR) KS2 Project

It is widely assumed that increasing the number of Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the classroom will be beneficial to children, and this is one important aim of the recently implemented Workforce Agreement. But there are still significant gaps in knowledge about many aspects of their deployment and impact. The Class Size and Pupil-Adult Ratio (CSPAR) KS2 study built on earlier findings when the pupils were in reception and KS1 and investigated: 1. the deployment of TAs in classrooms and how key parties involved perceived this; 2. the effect of TAs on interactions involving pupils and teachers in the same classrooms, and on pupil attainments. The study had a longitudinal, mixed method and multi-informant design. There were 202 schools, 332 classes and 8728 pupils in Y4. Methods of data collection included: for the whole sample) questionnaires completed by TAs, teachers and head teachers, assessments of pupil attainments in mathematics, English and science, data on pupil background, and (for a sub-sample) case studies and a systematic observation study. This study found that the TA’s role in KS2 is predominantly a direct one, in the sense of face-to-face interactions supporting certain pupils. There was no evidence that the presence of TAs, or any characteristic of TAs, had a measurable effect on pupil attainment. However, results were clear in showing that TAs had an indirect effect on teaching, e.g., pupils had a more active form of interaction with the teacher and there was more individualised teacher attention. This supported teachers’ views that TAs are effective in supporting them in this way. We conclude that more attention needs to be paid to what we call the pedagogical role of TAs so that they can be used effectively to help teachers and pupils, particularly in the context of the enhanced roles for TAs being introduced as part of the Government’s remodeling agenda.

The Impact of Support Staff on Pupils' "Positive Approaches to Learning" and Their Academic Progress.

In recent years there has been an unprecedented increase in support staff in schools in England and Wales. There were widespread expectations that this will be of benefit to teachers and pupils but there has been little systematic research to address the impact of support staff. This study used a naturalistic longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between the amount of support (measured by teacher estimates and systematic observation) and pupils’ ‘Positive Approaches to Learning’ (PAL) and academic progress. There were over 8000 pupils across two cohorts and seven age groups. Results on PAL were not straightforward by there was a consistent trend for those with most support to make less academic progress than similar pupils with less support, and this was not explained by characteristics of the pupils such as piror attainment or level of special educational need.

Reassessing the impact of teaching assistants : how research challenges practice and policy

© 2012 Peter Blatchford, Anthony Russell and Rob Webster, all chapters. Over the last decade, teaching assistants (TAs) have become an established part of everyday classroom life. TAs are often used by schools to help low-attaining pupils and those with special educational needs. Yet despite the huge rise in the number of TAs working in UK classrooms, very little is known about their impact on pupils.This key and timely text examines the impact of TAs on pupils’ learning and behaviour, and on teachers and teaching. The authors present the provocative findings from the ground-breaking and seminal Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) project. This was the largest, most in-depth study ever to be carried out in this field. It critically examined the effect of TA support on the academic progress of 8,200 pupils, made extensive observations of nearly 700 pupils and over 100 TAs, and collected data from over 17,800 questionnaire responses and interviews with over 470 school staff and pupils.This book reveals the extent to which the pupils in most need are let down by current classroom practice. The authors present a robust challenge to the current widespread practices concerning TA preparation, deployment and practice, structured around a conceptually and empirically strong explanatory framework. The authors go on to show how schools need to change if they are to realise the potential of TAs.With serious implications not just for classroom practice, but also whole-school, local authority and government policy, this will be an indispensable text for primary, secondary and special schools, senior management teams, those involved in teacher training and professional development, policy-makers and academics.

The views of teaching assistants in English key stage 2 classes on their role, training and job satisfaction

As part of a multi-method, long-term study, 340 Teaching Assistants across Years 4 to 6 completed questionnaires that, among other things, asked for their perceptions of their role, training and job satisfaction. TAs reported that they mainly worked in the classroom, supporting pupils, rather than carrying out non-teaching tasks. They worked particularly with pupils who have SEN, low attainment or difficult behaviour. This role is mismatched with the qualifications of many. While the great majority had high levels of job satisfaction, many referred to the dramatic changes in the role of the TA, which have not been matched with changes in status, pay, conditions of service and contracts. This was a source of complaint for many. The overall picture is one of patchy, ad hoc, unsystematic changes in the TA role, which have failed to connect either with training needs or contractual conditions.

Engaging with the question ‘should teaching assistants have a pedagogical role?’

We thank the three commentators for their thoughts on our paper and welcome the opportunity to respond. We agree with Maggie Balshaw that positive learning outcomes are likely to flow from ‘high levels of preparedness, creative deployment and effective practice by teachers and TAs’, but evidence of such practice and the ‘alternative ways of classroom organisation or teacher behaviour’ of the kind Felicity Fletcher-Campbell suggests we missed, hardly figured in the surveys we conducted. We reported what was evident under normal circumstances, not what is possible with training and high quality teamwork. We have, however, embarked on a project funded by the Esmèe Fairbairn Foundation that will begin to develop with schools alternative solutions to teaching assistant (TA) deployment on a more ‘theoretically defensible foundation and substantive evidence base’, which Michael Giangreco reminds us is largely absent from current TA deployment. Whilst there are some sound principles in the DfEE guidance, since its publication in 2000 there has been a near 150% increase in TAs, largely as a result of extensive school workforce remodelling. It is essential that this changed reality informs and is reflected in new guidance that challenges long-held assumptions about TA impact. We recognise the simple classification of SEN in the study, but this was the only possible method for statistical analysis. This did, however, allow us to arrive at clear systematic results on the way pupils with SEN tended to get more support from TAs, at the expense of interactions with the teacher. Fletcher-Campbell suggests that we have overlooked the significance of ‘exclusionary processes, status and power’. Whilst we recognise that these are important, our paper’s essential point – to address and explain the unexpected and troubling negative relationship between the amount of TA support and academic progress – is missed. Fletcher-Campbell seems to us to be asking for a different type of research activity. A concern with ‘typicality’ is rather dismissed, yet it is the use of rigorous quantitative methods that has enabled us to establish the negative relationship as well as identify and examine possible explanatory and confounding factors. We feel it is rather unfortunate to assume that ‘mundane’ factors such as adult-topupil talk are trivial given the widely accepted view that interactions are central