I’m a teaching assistant..ask me anything!

[Colouroutsidethelines]

20 years experience working in early years in a primary school. Anything you’d like to know?

If you work out your hourly rate, is it more than minimum wage?

Do you get a paid break?

Contracts vary from school to school but I work 37.5 hours a week and come out with £1,445 monthly take home pay.

My hours are 8.30-4.30 with half an hour unpaid lunch break. No other breaks in the day.

Would you recommend it?

So many TAs leave at our Primary School leave and turnover is high.
Why do you think this is ?

l know pay is pants and TAs are given so much responsibility often including PPA cover for teachers but it seems to be getting worse.

How are SLT ? I guess this depends on the school?

That’s shocking only one half hour unpaid break !

No questions but wanted to say you’re all worth your weight in gold and should be paid an awful lot more.

What makes a good teacher to work with? Some of my closest friends in school are TAs I’ve worked with (I’m a teacher). A good TA is an absolute angel

Have you witnessed a big deterioration in behaviour?

Why do so few people want to be TA’s now? Is it hard supporting children with Sen and not communicating with parents at all or very little? I find this dynamic really ofd that the ta spends the most time with my child with Sen but we can’t communicate with them directly or visa versa.

Which is why I left an sen TA role after 15 years.
I now work 25 hours supporting young adults with Sen 25 hours a week and earn £1700 monthly
I salute you!
It's not an easy job

Apologies I repeated myself re my working hours

The pay

I think you’ve answered your own question right there! The pay is horrendous for the workload. There is an huge amount of responsibility and often working with the most challenging children. You can get more stacking shelves in a supermarket so you have to really love the job to stay.

Poor SLT makes things even harder. I’ve worked with good and bad over the years and the difference with a supportive SLT is unprecedented.

Good question!

I love an organised teacher. A teacher who sees you as equal and in it together. That doesn’t delegate all the crappy jobs and pulls their weight and backs you up against SLT when issues arise. A good sense of humour helps the difficult days feel less hard too.

I can’t really put into the words the level of deterioration in behaviour. I truly believe the general public have no idea how bad things are in education currently.

We have so many children now presenting with SEN that it’s unmanageable in our school. We are a rated “good” school in a pretty affluent area of the town. I dread to think what the schools in deprived areas must be dealing with.

Some days it impossible to teach with the amount of behaviour problems, nappy changes, speech difficulties etc.

The use of technology from a young age, passive parenting along with the food culture/ diets of children is having a massive effect we find.

Again I think the pay has a huge amount to do with it.

Working with some children that have SEN can be very difficult indeed. I’ve been spat at, punched, kicked, called horrendous names and had hair pulled from my head.

We have nearly half a reception class with SEN needs, many of them who truly need one to one support and can’t have it because of funding. Most should be in specialist provision but there just aren’t the places. So mainstream schools are under huge stress. The other children witness some pretty horrific things daily and you end up feeling like you’re failing everyone.

We use the tapestry app for home/school communication and I also use diary’s when needed between parents and school as a means of communicating along with speaking to parents at the end of the day.

I'm a teacher op and agree with all you say.
I have moved to an online school for all these reasons.

What do you feel makes a good SLT? I'm SLT, working with many teaching assistants and I'm really keen to support them as well as I can. I'd love to hear your opinion!

Nothing to ask but just want to say that I'm indebted to the TAs in my son's school. They are incredible professionals and I think you all deserve a massive pay rise.

Are you my TA??? 🤣🤣🤣 In my classroom we are a team; there are times my TA is the expert - it isn’t always me! I try to split jobs so they aren’t always left with the lowest ability children or the group with high behavioural needs: we split this pretty equally!

And a bottle of whiskey hidden in our stock cupboard 🤣

(I am of course joking about the last part…)

Being keen to support them is probably the most important thing!

Ours seem to be indifferent at best, hard to approach and when we complain we are just told to get with it because all schools are facing the same problems. Nothing is actually put in place to help. Our full SLT (4) also are none teaching which I think doesn’t help.

Yes 👏🏻

Thank you so much.

Is working in a small or big school better?
Which would you say is better for the children you support?

Couldn’t agree more - ex teacher here. I’m immensely glad my DC are only one year away from exiting education. Piss poor parenting/passive parenting is making schools unmanageable and no one seems to want to address the problem 🙁😩.

Agreed! My very first TA is now one of my closest friends 25 years on. Good TAs are the lifeblood of a classroom and we take them for granted at our peril ❤️