Teaching Assistants

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing this important debate. I know that he is a passionate supporter of the work of teaching assistants and the valuable and important contribution that they and others make. I also know that there are many across the House of Commons who support teaching assistants. Yesterday, I bumped into the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), who is training to be a teaching assistant himself. I note that he is sorry that he could not be here to speak in this debate.

There were some aspects of Opposition Members’ speeches with which I was not quite up to date. I was in school after decimalisation came in, so I cannot relate to that experience. In fact, I did not actually eat school dinners at my primary school. There was a chip shop over the road, and the school provided a special lollipop lady to take us to the chip shop at lunchtime instead. So I did not avail myself of the services of the school dinner ladies at the time, but lollipop ladies were also an important part of our school infrastructure.

The Government value the important contribution made by teaching assistants, often in challenging circumstances, to the teaching, effective management and organisation of schools. We also value hugely the role of teachers and we recognise that teaching is the No. 1 factor in high-quality education systems.

[Lindsay Roy]

Given the Minister’s recognition of the valuable role of teachers and teaching assistants and what she said about the importance of this debate, can she explain why the seats opposite are empty?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sure that it is because Government Members have every confidence that the Government are taking action on the issue.

We know that teaching assistants are dedicated to improving the learning and life chances of children and young people in our schools. I note that the number of teaching assistants has increased under this Government: the number of teaching assistants employed in maintained schools and academies was 97,000 in 2005 and more than 200,000 in 2012. It is not just the Government who value teaching assistants; we know that schools value the roles that TAs perform.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am absolutely delighted to hear the Minister speak so glowingly about teaching assistants and recognise that numbers have increased under the current Government. Can she therefore tell us that central Government will take no action that will discourage the recruitment of teaching assistants in the future?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can confirm that. I was going to come to it later in my comments.

Over the time in which teaching assistants have become part of our school life, their role has developed from providing general administrative and logistical support to teachers to supporting the attainment of groups of pupils in schools. As many Members have said, teaching assistants are not employed simply to support the classroom teacher; they play an active role to improve children’s literacy and numeracy skills and behaviour, and often work tirelessly to help children with special educational needs and complex emotional, medical and physical needs achieve academic success. As many hon. Members have mentioned, evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation and others has shown that to be the case. Teaching assistants also have a positive effect on teacher morale and reduce stress, which is another important factor. It is absolutely right to consider teaching assistants as part of a school team made up not just of teachers—the pedagogical experts—but of all kinds of support staff, including teaching assistants, those who work with school meals and school librarians. We should see them as part of a whole.

In my comments, I want to address a misconception about the future of teaching assistants and the claims that many will lose their jobs. I absolutely assure the hon. Member for Stockton North and his colleagues that neither the Department for Education nor the Government have any plans or powers to make that happen. I welcome the opportunity laid out by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), for us to have a debate about the best use and deployment of teaching assistants and how it works with other aspects of school organisation, such as continuing professional development and training. We all want a highly trained, highly skilled work force of teachers and teaching assistants. That is our aim.

The evidence is clear that teaching assistants’ impact on pupil attainment is varied. The best teaching assistants are well-trained, informed, skilled and well-managed, but that is not true universally. We can do more to help school leaders understand how to get the best from their teaching assistants for the benefit of their pupils.

[Alex Cunningham]

I put a question to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister about the ambition of the National Education Trust to have professional standards for teaching assistants, which is supported by Unison and other trade unions. Would the Minister push it that far and go for professional standards in the development of teaching assistants?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I will come to that later in my comments. We do have some plans with reference to teaching assistants.

[Bill Esterson]

Before the Minister moves on—this may come later in her remarks as well—I welcome what she said about ensuring that good practice is everywhere when it comes to teaching assistants. Does she have an assessment of how much good practice there is and how much practice she would like to change?

[Elizabeth Truss]

No, I do not have that assessment at this stage.

In 2013, the Department published a review of efficiency in the school system showing that the differences in the impact of TAs on attainment can be explained largely by how individual schools choose to deploy them. That is supported by the recent report from the Education Endowment Foundation, which showed that TAs can improve literacy and numeracy skills when deployed well and suggested that when used to support specific pupils in small groups or through structured interventions, TAs can be effective at improving attainment.

My main point of contention with the speeches made by Opposition Members is about how to improve attainment. The Government do not believe that there is a one-size-fits-all solution. We believe in a school-led system. As the hon. Members who are on the Education Committee will be well aware from Andreas Schleicher’s evidence to the Committee recently, international statistics suggest that a combination of autonomy and accountability achieves the best results for schools. When head teachers are given the power to make decisions about how to deploy staff in their schools, create an effective team, develop that team and manage talent, but are held to account through rigorous systems of inspection and external accountability, that leads to the best results, which is why we are reluctant to dictate to schools how to deploy teaching assistants or impose rigid boundaries about what teaching assistants can and cannot do. We know that there are different types of schools with different students, and there might be different factors in different areas of the country, so we are reluctant to create a one-size-fits-all policy.

That is my main point of difference from Opposition Members. I certainly do not disagree about the value of teaching assistants—the evidence shows that they are an important part of our education system—but we may disagree about the best way to ensure that schools deploy teaching assistants to students’ benefit.

[Mark Hendrick]

The Minister is giving a positive picture of the role of teaching assistants and is making the point that the Government do not think it a good idea to be too prescriptive about how teaching assistants are used; those considerations are best made locally. However, can she say a little about how she feels about low pay? As I said in my contribution, low pay is a problem for teaching assistants. We obviously value the work that they do, but in doing so, should we not see that they are properly remunerated and not just treated as cheap labour?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The evidence from the EEF suggests that teaching assistants who are properly remunerated and have a clear training structure achieve more, and that is something the head teacher ought to be taking into account.

In view of the evidence, we know that more can be done to help schools ensure that their TAs have a rewarding career and make an even greater contribution and impact in schools. We have been gathering evidence from teaching schools, academy chains and other key stakeholders on what good deployment and support for TAs looks like in our best schools.

We know that successful senior leaders deploy TAs based on their school’s particular needs and that different deployment models can work in the right circumstances. However, underpinning those models is a number of principles that good schools apply universally in deploying TAs. Those include employing suitably qualified TAs. We know that the TA’s level of general qualifications and skills—for example, their literacy and numeracy skills—can vary, and it is important that schools ensure that the qualifications, skills and backgrounds of their TAs are sufficiently robust and match the specific needs of the school.

We know that it is important that TAs are deployed according to their skills and expertise. TAs are employed in a variety of roles in schools, from providing administrative support for teachers to assisting with classroom and SEN teaching, and we have seen that good schools have a very clear structure and description of those roles. It is also important that schools are continually reviewing the deployment of TAs to ensure that they are achieving the stated objectives and are reviewing matters when those objectives have been achieved.

It is important to provide joint preparation and planning time for TAs and teachers to establish clear lesson outcomes and goals, which is a point made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson). Planning and preparation time are of course vital for teachers and teaching assistants to get the best out of their lessons. One thing that we are working on in the new maths hubs that the Government are establishing across the country is looking at best practice from overseas on organising the planning and preparation for lessons. However, in a school-led system, that ultimately has to be led by schools, rather than by the Government saying, “This is what we want you to do on a national basis.” I think that Opposition Members and I agree on the outcomes that we want to see; the question mark is over exactly how to achieve them. It is really essential for teaching assistants to understand the targets for pupils and to be trained in assessing pupil progress.

[Bill Esterson]

Does the Minister accept that it is a good idea for good practice evidence to be given to schools, so that they can make those judgements locally?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I do, and I am about to say more about that in a minute; I think the hon. Gentleman has anticipated the rest of my speech.

It is also important to implement strong performance management procedures to improve the quality of support and teaching in the classroom and to provide TAs with quality training and support, along with mentoring programmes and career development opportunities. We have also seen some schools putting in place innovative staffing structures and creating support staff roles that are very different from the traditional TA. Some schools prefer to deploy specialist support staff with degrees to work with high-performing pupils on achieving excellence or to lead classes, allowing teachers to spend more time with underperforming pupils.

Opposition Members have asked what the Government will do about this issue. The answer is that we want to make those principles a reality. That is why our intention is to make the evidence of good practice, supported by case studies, available to schools this year. We will be issuing guidance to schools about the best use and deployment of TAs based on the best available practice. I would very much welcome any practical suggestions on what more we could do to support TAs when the report is published. This is an important development that the Government are undertaking. We recognise the value of teaching assistants and we want to make the debate about how teaching assistants are best deployed and to help schools learn from other schools, because a school-led system provides the opportunity to innovate and develop best practice examples that other schools can then learn from.

[Alex Cunningham]

The Minister talks about the autonomy of schools and about schools being able to innovate and introduce best practice. However, one academy chain is talking about a huge contract for support staff across the entire country, possibly screwing down wages and everything else. Does the Minister really think that that will leave the school with the autonomy that they need and the highly motivated teaching assistants that they want to develop in the school situation?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Ultimately, schools are judged on their results. They are inspected by Ofsted and judged through the accountability system. That will be even better under the new progress 8 measure, in which the achievement of each individual getting a bit better will count. The only way for schools to achieve that is to motivate their staff and to have staff who are well trained, who understand what pupil progress looks like and who feel that they are part of a team. That is about good management. If a school is not doing that, it will find that staff do not have sufficient motivation and that they will not do an effective job. Part of the point of the Government putting together the best practice study is to show schools what good practice looks like for those who are not doing it already.

[Alex Cunningham]

I intervene a final time and I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. She talks about training, autonomy and all manner of things, but the issue is also about remuneration and reward for teaching staff. We face a situation in which the wages being paid to them are being screwed down, rather than the contribution that they make being recognising properly through their pay. Does she not think that it would be better if they were better paid?

[Elizabeth Truss]

When I speak to head teachers, they tell me that staff are motivated by a variety of things—partly the remuneration package, but also such things as the career structure, training opportunities and the atmosphere in a school. All those things contribute to a good package and it is up to school leaders who want to retain and recruit the best people to offer an attractive package to encourage people to join or stay part of their school.

We also want to see more effective use of TAs to support pupils with SEN to progress. It is not enough simply to allocate hours of support; we also have to look at outcomes. TAs can play a very positive role in helping teachers to meet children’s special educational needs, and there are many good TAs doing that. However, the support that they provide should be part of a well-thought-out package of support for the individual child, rather than as a substitute for teacher involvement with that child.

We have built on reports from Ofsted and Brian Lamb when developing our SEN and disability reforms, first in the Green Paper, “Support and aspiration”, and now through the Children and Families Act 2014. Reforms will ensure that there is a greater focus on outcomes rather than on the hours of provision in agreeing the teaching and support to be provided for pupils with SEN, giving families and young people a greater say. We have also established a national scholarship fund for support staff, helping them to develop expertise and higher level skills. In the most recent round, 113 support staff were funded to undertake postgraduate qualifications and training in supporting children with SEN and disabilities.

We have encouraged schools, when deciding how to invest the pupil premium funding, to engage actively with high-quality evidence from robust research studies. That includes the research summarised in the EEF teaching and learning toolkit.

In summary, the Government value the role of teaching assistants. We believe that it is down to schools to make sure that those teaching assistants are deployed in the best possible way to support the learning of students and the best possible pupil progress. However, this year, we will be publishing best practice evidence to help show schools how they can deploy teaching assistants to the benefit of both teaching assistants and the students in a school. I thank hon. Members for what has been a very interesting and helpful debate, and I would welcome their contributions to the work we are doing on teaching assistants.