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Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I do not plan to speak at length but am happy to speak briefly. I very much welcome the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) making the case for teaching assistants, and I should declare a family interest: I am the brother of a teaching assistant who works in special educational needs setting. I recognise the incredibly important work that teaching assistants do, which the hon. Lady has encapsulated well.
We would all like to see everyone in the education system better paid for what they do and their activities recognised, but I want to highlight the specific challenge, particularly for our special educational needs schools, when it comes to funding teaching assistants. In the recently announced pay offer, which I strongly welcome, we saw an improvement to the usual situation in that the offer covers not just schools, but further education; that is very welcome. The challenge, though, is that when successive Governments have funded teachers’ pay, they have not provided the same support for schools when it comes to teaching assistants’ pay. Even the lower increases that we have seen through the local authority pay bands have not been funded by the Treasury and the Department for Education in the same way that the teachers’ pay increases have over the years. That has increased the pressure on schools, particularly special educational needs schools, such as Fort Royal Primary School in my constituency, which have to—quite rightly, in order to meet need—employ a large number of teaching assistants.
I know that the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), will quite rightly point out that the Government have more than doubled high needs funding—I welcome that and know there is significantly more money going into the area—but that doubling of funding is in response to demand and to what the Children’s Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), has acknowledged is a rising level of need in our schools. I speak in this debate to urge my right hon. Friend the Schools Minister to consider how, particularly with our special educational needs schools, but also with our mainstream schools that are supporting more and more children with SEN, we can ensure that pay awards reach teaching assistants and, crucially, that they are fully and properly funded; otherwise, we will have a situation where, in order for schools to meet their commitments to teachers’ pay and other areas they want to support through investment, they unfortunately have to cut back on the very important work of teaching assistants.
I join the hon. Member for Gower in recognising the quality, quantity and range of teaching assistants’ work, and the important role they play in supporting inclusion. The Education Committee has looked at the issue of persistent absence in school, and we have found that inclusion is crucial. Making sure that children’s needs are met is a crucial part of ensuring they can continue to attend school. I do not pretend that this is an easy area; on one small point of defence—the White Paper, which I co-wrote, did mention the work of teaching assistants in a couple of areas, as hon. Lady pointed out, but it also talked about apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships, which are a real opportunity to build a route of progression for teaching assistants. I have seen some very interesting schools that have found teaching assistants, sports assistants and meal assistants who are able and excited to move up into the teaching profession, and those schools have provided support for them to do so and a route for further progression. I would love the Government to look at what further routes of progression could be built for teaching assistants so that more of them can go on—perhaps when the children have grown up and flown the nest, as is the case for my sister—into a career in teaching.
The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to take part in the debate under your chairship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on her well informed and passionate speech opening this debate on the petition relating to pay for teaching assistants. I would like to start by saying that the Government recognise teaching assistants as a valuable part of the school workforce. We appreciate the dedication of our teaching assistants and know the valuable contribution that they make, alongside excellent teachers, to pupils’ education.
The Department recently published data on the number of teaching assistants through the school workforce census, which showed that there are now 281,000 full-time equivalent teaching assistants in schools. That represents an increase of 5,300 since 2021. Teaching assistants now make up three in 10 of the school workforce overall, accounting for 37% of the nursery and primary workforce, 14% of the secondary workforce and 52% of the special school workforce.
We know that when teaching assistants are well trained and well deployed, they can improve pupil attainment. Evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation shows that teaching assistants can add up to four months’ improvement in pupil progress when delivering one-to-one or small group support using structured interventions, as the hon. Member pointed out in her opening speech. That is why we set out in the SEND and AP Green Paper our intention to develop a longer-term approach for teaching assistants, to ensure that their impact is more consistent across the system and that they can specialise in interventions that are proven to work.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I hope the Minister will indulge me. When I was teaching, I had a young man in my classroom called Jac Richards, who was a wheelchair user and non-verbal; he used an Eyegaze. He was well supported by his teaching assistants, Hayley and Joanne, and learnt French from year 7 to year 11. Unfortunately he was unable to sit the GCSE exam, but the gift they gave him in preparing and supporting me to prepare resources for an Eyegaze to teach a young man French was absolutely magic. Also, he participated fully, and this was a mainstream 11-to-16 school. When I say “fully”, I mean he was able to come on the trips to France and everything. That is how magic his experience was in school: he was able to be in my classroom and to participate. That is how wonderful teaching assistants are, and I hope that the Minister hears more examples like that, because it really was an honour and a privilege to be able to teach Jac thanks to them.
Nick Gibb
I am delighted that the hon. Member was able to put that on the record. I hope that the teaching assistants she mentioned will see that in Hansard. We want those examples to be more consistent right across the country, so the Department already provides support for teaching assistants through a number of programmes, including training to improve maths for teaching assistants through the maths hubs, and to support them to identify and meet the needs of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities through the universal services programme. We are also pioneering innovative practice through the “Early Language and Support for Every Child” pilot to trial new ways of working to better identify and support children with speech, language and communication needs in early years and primary schools.
The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, IfATE, recently published a revised level 3 teaching assistant apprenticeship developed by employers, which became available for delivery from 6 May this year. Schools will be able to access up to £7,000 of levy funding to train and upskill teaching assistants. Of course, schools are free to set terms and conditions for teaching assistants and support staff according to their own circumstances. Local government employees, including school support staff, are covered by the National Joint Council terms and conditions, known as the green book. Most schools, including academies, use the local government pay scales in conjunction with the green book. Local government pay scales are set through negotiation between the Local Government Association, representing the employer, and local government trade unions, such as Unison, Unite and GMB, which represent the employee. Central Government have no formal role in those matters.
Currently, a generous offer is on the table for employees covered by local government pay scales. The offer for 2023-2024 is a flat cash uplift of £1,925 from 1 April 2023. That is the same uplift agreed for the 2022-23 pay deal. If accepted, it would equate to an increase of 9.42% this year for those on the lowest pay scale and an increase of £4,033, or 22%, over the two years since April 2021. We also know that schools can and do pay teaching assistants more than those on the lowest pay scale, currently earning £20,441 per annum. It is disappointing that the unions have rejected that offer, which would provide certainty for staff who are waiting to see an increase in the size of their pay packets. I hope that the pay award can be settled without the use of strike action, as we know that that will impact children’s education and cause disruption for parents.
The Government understand the pressures that people face with the cost of living, which is why we are providing £94 billion of support to households with higher costs across the 2022-23 and 2023-24 financial years—equivalent to £3,300 per household on average. Points have been raised in the debate about the ability of schools to pay for teaching assistants, particularly in the light of the recent pay award. The Government are committed to providing a world-class education for all children and have invested significantly in schools to achieve that. The 2022 autumn statement announced an additional £2 billion in each of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 financial years, over and above totals announced in the spending review in 2021.
In response to the issues raised by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), let me say that the pay award announced last week is fully funded. Last week, we announced an additional £525 million this year to support schools with a teachers’ pay award, and with a further £900 million in 2024-25. That means that funding for mainstream schools and special needs is more than £3.9 billion higher this year compared with last year. That is on top of the £4 billion cash increase last year—an increase of 16% over those two years. We submitted detailed evidence of the schools cost to the pay body, the School Teachers’ Review Body, and set out that the first 3.5% of the pay award is already funded by a £3.5 billion increase in school funding, which also included a very pessimistic assumption about energy costs that the hon. Gentleman also mentioned. The extra 3%—between 3.5% and 6.5%—is the funding that I just announced of £525 million this year and £900 million next year. The unions have acknowledged that the pay award has been properly funded.
Next year, school funding will be more than £59.6 billion—the highest ever level of school funding and the highest ever level in real terms and in real terms per pupil, as measured by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Schools are expected to use their core budgets to pay for staff, including teaching assistants, and they may use local government pay scales when setting pay. The Department’s affordability calculation for schools takes account of the latest pay offer to teaching assistants.
The petition highlighted the importance of teaching assistants supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities. I reiterate the importance of teaching assistants’ support to those pupils, and outline our commitment to ensuring that such pupils receive the support they need. High needs funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities will rise to £10.1 billion in this financial year, 2023-24; that is an increase of over 50% on the 2019-20 allocations. On top of that funding, special and alternative provision schools will receive an additional £50 million in 2023-24 through the teachers’ pay annual grant to support schools with their staffing costs.
Schools are expected to meet additional support costs of up to £6,000 per pupil with SEND from their core budgets. They can then seek additional funding from local authorities’ high needs budgets, and local authorities usually assess the need for extra funding through the education, health and care needs assessment process. If a pupil has an EHC plan, the local authority has a duty to secure their special educational provision, which will often include a teaching assistant. If the cost of that provision exceeds £6,000 per pupil, it will be paid for from the local authority’s high needs budget, which, as I have said, has increased considerably over the last few years. On 2 March, we published the SEND and AP improvement plan in response to the Green Paper. This outlines the Government’s mission for the special educational needs and alternative provision system to fulfil children’s potential, to build parents’ trust and to provide financial stability.
As I outlined earlier, we intend to develop a longer-term approach for teaching assistants to ensure that their impact is consistent across the system and the different responsibilities they take on. We want teaching assistants to be well trained and to be able to develop specific expertise —for example, in speech and language interventions. As a first step, we have commissioned a research project to develop our evidence base on current school approaches, demand and best practice. That research is being conducted by YouGov and CFE Research, with findings due by the end of the year.
The Government value teaching assistants and the role they play alongside excellent teachers. We recognise the positive impact they can have on pupil outcomes when they are well deployed and well trained. I have set out that we will be developing a longer-term approach to ensure that this is the case and that the impact of teaching assistants is more consistent across the system. The first step we are taking is to improve our evidence base through the research project that is currently in the field. Schools are best placed to recruit and pay teaching assistants according to their own needs, which is why central Government do not have a role in setting pay for teaching assistants or other school support staff. Many schools, including academies, pay teaching assistants according to local government pay scales, and if the pay offer for local government employees is accepted for 2023-24, it would see the lowest paid earning 22% more than they did in April 2021.