Has anyone chosen to be a TA as a career straight from school?

[BertrandRussell]

My ds is thinking about this. He was planning to be a primary school teacher, but he has decided he doesn’t think university will be for him. So he’s considering other options. Has anyone got any experiences or knowledge that might be helpful to him?

The 'living wage' wage paid to TAs is if they were working all year round. It's physically impossible to do that as schools have holidays. Add on that it's unlikely a TA will be contracted to work more than 30 hours a week and the actual pay is 60% of the living wage.

Perfectly legal that way, apparently - as long as the actual hours worked are paid at NMW, they aren't breaking the law. But an income of under a thousand pounds a month for working with limited opportunities for progression and being in the front line for redundancies every term isn't comparable to being a teacher in terms of pay, opportunities or security.

Sadly it’s not really much of a career either, as there is such little scope for career progression-no pay scale, opportunity for promotion.

Thank you all again. The salary isn’t really a problem- for now at least. He’ll carry on doing all his other bits and pieces that earn money, and he’ll probably be living at home for a while yet. He’s just thinking of options for when his course finishes. An apprenticeship does seem like a good option- particularly as it’d be term time only so plenty of spare time for his other activities.

Locally to me, I've seen today a primary school sports and play specialist apprenticeship as well as the outward bounds/sailing leader one. Something similar and local to you might be just the ticket, and the NVQ qualification would count as UCAS points if he decides to try University later on.