Developing a teaching assistant role

With no conventional classroom assistants to help teachers with their administrative burdens, Salmestone Primary had to think of new ways to help reduce time spent by them in this area.

Organisation Name:: Salmestone Primary School
Region:: Cross-Regional
Topic:: Administration
Type of Organisation:: Primary school
Size of Organisation:: 101 to 500
Budget:: None

Brief description of the project

The priority for the school is raising standards of literacy and numeracy. The support staff budget is dedicated to the deployment of Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) to work directly with children with learning difficulties. The school has a high concentration of pupils with special educational needs. LSAs have been specifically trained to work with pupils. There are no conventional classroom assistants with a more general support role. Teachers therefore get even less support with certain routine tasks than is usually the case.

The objective of this project was to seek to relieve the bureaucratic burden for teaching staff, where it is currently not possible to provide specific administrative support to teachers, and to do this without detracting from the school's drive on numeracy and literacy in which most support staff are currently engaged.

Following discussions with a group of teachers, it was agreed that the school would develop a new teachers' assistant role. The aim was to relieve the burden on teachers by delegating tasks which did not need to be done by teachers such as photocopying, classroom display, preparation of materials and the maintenance, stocktaking and distribution of subject-based resources.

The class-based support which took place in Year 2 included reading with pupils, helping children to get ready for lessons and some ICT support. The marking of optional SATs papers was considered appropriate to delegate and this did not require any interpretation.

Outcomes of the project

The project is viewed by teachers, the Head teacher and governors as a great success. The three teachers involved feel that their time is being used more effectively by improving the professional content in their work. They were able to use the time on tasks such as updating Science and ICT policies and Schemes of Work during the term, instead of in the summer break.

The assistant also helped in preparing detailed analyses of SATs results for all years, providing valuable information to teachers and the management team much earlier that would normally be possible.

The school calculated that that the net gain in teacher time was equivalent to the 20 hours per week that the assistant was employed.

The Head teacher and governors then agreed to extend the project by employing two part-time assistants (the equivalent of 1.5 staff units), one for Years 1-3, the other for Years 4-6 for the 1999/2000 academic year. The cost of this was less than half the salary of a teaching post.

The breakdown of tasks and time was influenced by the time of year that the pilot took place. The school envisages that over a full academic year, both the range of tasks and the proportion of time spent on each would change. The high concentration of time of SATs activity reflects the fact that this was an important administrative activity which needed to be undertaken at that time.

Transferability

The project has the potential to be adopted by other schools. The minimal time investment required makes it possible to get immediate gains. It may be possible to offer additional hours to someone who is already employed in a non-teaching capacity. The key factor is realising the potential benefits. Had the school not been given the pump priming money (i.e. the set-up funds for the project), it is unlikely that they would have considered adopting this approach as early as this. However, having piloted the use of the teacher assistant, they were sufficiently convinced to review the budget to enable them to continue and extend the use of the assistant role.

The effective use of support staff to free teachers to teach, demonstrated by this example from Salmestone School, is at the heart of the Government’s proposals for reform detailed in the National Agreement of January 2003. The leaflet Developing the role of school support staff contains a summary of the agreed reforms concentrating specifically on the benefits to support staff. The leaflet is available on the TeacherNet website. Further information on the developing role of teaching assistants, including case studies, can also be found on TeacherNet.

For further details contact:

teacher1@salmestone.kent.sch.uk

Resources and staffing

The school received funding to employ an assistant for 20 hours per week during the summer term. The time was divided equally between teachers working in Years 2, 3 and 6, who were given responsibility for managing the resource.

Methodology

Each teacher identified tasks which would be undertaken by the assistant and spent time briefing the assistant on what was required. The initial investment in teacher time to delegate the various tasks was minimal. A broad summary of how the time was used in the period showed the following:

Marking and collation of the non-statutory SATs (the school has bought in optional SATs) 34%
Displaying pupils' work 20%
Providing class-based support (Key Stage 1 only) 16%
Filing pupil records, reports and work 13%
Support for Physical Education and games 6%
Photocopying 5%
Shredding 2%
Labelling 2%
Assisting in the library 2%

Context

Salmestone Primary School is a 5-11 community school of about 440 pupils.

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	Developing a teaching assistant role With no conventional classroom assistants to help teachers with their administrative burdens, Salmestone Primary had to think of new ways to help reduce time spent by them in this area. Organisation Name: Salmestone Primary School Region: Cross-Regional Topic: Administration Type of Organisation: Primary school Size of Organisation: 101 to 500 Budget: None Brief description of the project The priority for the school is raising standards of literacy and numeracy. The support staff budget is dedicated to the deployment of Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) to work directly with children with learning difficulties. The school has a high concentration of pupils with special educational needs. LSAs have been specifically trained to work with pupils. There are no conventional classroom assistants with a more general support role. Teachers therefore get even less support with certain routine tasks than is usually the case. The objective of this project was to seek to relieve the bureaucratic burden for teaching staff, where it is currently not possible to provide specific administrative support to teachers, and to do this without detracting from the school's drive on numeracy and literacy in which most support staff are currently engaged. Following discussions with a group of teachers, it was agreed that the school would develop a new teachers' assistant role. The aim was to relieve the burden on teachers by delegating tasks which did not need to be done by teachers such as photocopying, classroom display, preparation of materials and the maintenance, stocktaking and distribution of subject-based resources. The class-based support which took place in Year 2 included reading with pupils, helping children to get ready for lessons and some ICT support. The marking of optional SATs papers was considered appropriate to delegate and this did not require any interpretation. Outcomes of the project The project is viewed by teachers, the Head teacher and governors as a great success. The three teachers involved feel that their time is being used more effectively by improving the professional content in their work. They were able to use the time on tasks such as updating Science and ICT policies and Schemes of Work during the term, instead of in the summer break. The assistant also helped in preparing detailed analyses of SATs results for all years, providing valuable information to teachers and the management team much earlier that would normally be possible. The school calculated that that the net gain in teacher time was equivalent to the 20 hours per week that the assistant was employed. The Head teacher and governors then agreed to extend the project by employing two part-time assistants (the equivalent of 1.5 staff units), one for Years 1-3, the other for Years 4-6 for the 1999/2000 academic year. The cost of this was less than half the salary of a teaching post. The breakdown of tasks and time was influenced by the time of year that the pilot took place. The school envisages that over a full academic year, both the range of tasks and the proportion of time spent on each would change. The high concentration of time of SATs activity reflects the fact that this was an important administrative activity which needed to be undertaken at that time. Transferability The project has the potential to be adopted by other schools. The minimal time investment required makes it possible to get immediate gains. It may be possible to offer additional hours to someone who is already employed in a non-teaching capacity. The key factor is realising the potential benefits. Had the school not been given the pump priming money (i.e. the set-up funds for the project), it is unlikely that they would have considered adopting this approach as early as this. However, having piloted the use of the teacher assistant, they were sufficiently convinced to review the budget to enable them to continue and extend the use of the assistant role. The effective use of support staff to free teachers to teach, demonstrated by this example from Salmestone School, is at the heart of the Government’s proposals for reform detailed in the National Agreement of January 2003. The leaflet Developing the role of school support staff contains a summary of the agreed reforms concentrating specifically on the benefits to support staff. The leaflet is available on the TeacherNet website. Further information on the developing role of teaching assistants, including case studies, can also be found on TeacherNet. For further details contact: teacher1@salmestone.kent.sch.uk Resources and staffing The school received funding to employ an assistant for 20 hours per week during the summer term. The time was divided equally between teachers working in Years 2, 3 and 6, who were given responsibility for managing the resource. Methodology Each teacher identified tasks which would be undertaken by the assistant and spent time briefing the assistant on what was required. The initial investment in teacher time to delegate the various tasks was minimal. A broad summary of how the time was used in the period showed the following: Marking and collation of the non-statutory SATs (the school has bought in optional SATs) 34% Displaying pupils' work 20% Providing class-based support (Key Stage 1 only) 16% Filing pupil records, reports and work 13% Support for Physical Education and games 6% Photocopying 5% Shredding 2% Labelling 2% Assisting in the library 2% Context Salmestone Primary School is a 5-11 community school of about 440 pupils. « Back	Search Case studies Teachernet Browse case studies Feedback Advanced search