Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of classroom support ratios in mainstream schools in Surrey Heath constituency.

School support staff, including classroom support staff, play a vital role in children’s education.

Headteachers are responsible for recruitment and deployment in their schools as they are best placed to understand the specific needs of their pupils and make staffing decisions accordingly.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s guidance report ‘Deployment of Teaching Assistants’ makes a number of recommendations to help schools make decisions about how to deploy their teaching assistants to ensure they are used effectively.

In October 2024 the department released the new Financial Benchmarking & Insights Tool to support schools. This service helps schools view and improve their spending, provision and deployment of staff by making comparisons to similar schools.