Teaching assistants quitting schools for supermarkets because of 'joke wages'

[noblegiraffe]

Finally getting some mainstream press attention:

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/09/teaching-assistants-quitting-schools-for-supermarkets-because-of-joke-wages

The article is very clear that schools cannot afford to pay higher wages for support staff. The DfE comment at the bottom says it is up to schools to improve support staff pay.

The education sector is falling apart. Teacher redundancies mean bigger class sizes. Fewer teaching assistants means zero in-class support unless your child has an EHCP. Recruitment issues mean that even if your child has an EHCP, they might not be able to hire anyone to support them.

The way provision for the most vulnerable students has been eroded over the last decade of school underfunding is devastating.

I know 5 as we went to school together.

Only one of those achieved Grade C or above in Maths and English. And went on to get A Levels.

The rest have Grade Ds and Es and had no previous work experience.

Hence why the role is not taken seriously...

It must be different around the country!

Yeah and a lot get the role through becoming parent helpers/active pta members and lunchtime supervisors (and have dc at the school. )

eltonjohnsglasses · 09/10/2022 15:17
I think they should be paid more but unfortunately no one wants to pay more taxes so what's the solution?

Don't reply with tax the rich!

2 topical examples. “Unboxed 2022: Festival of Creativity”. Heard of that, did you attend any? Government project to showcase are arts and creativity cost the tax payer £120m and is largely considered a flop. The “Common Platform” is a £300m IT project to merge multiple IT systems across the criminal justice system and is described as not for purpose (mildly). There’s a BBC program about it. So that’s nearly half a billion already. Need I go on?

If anyone is motivated to look/listen there are literally billions of pounds of public finances wasted each year, with complete lack of accountability in some cases and used prudently would go a long way to solve many of the problems described on this thread.

if you want the role to be taken seriously then the quality of staff needs to be better.

It’s the management and SLT who are taking it seriously enough to replace teachers. If you want compulsory extra qualifications, especially to PGCE level the pay will need to be a lot more than £15 / hr to justify the debt - and you’d need to justify any difference between teachers and TAs then - perhaps by paying teachers by the hour too, according to the expected work that they do out of school hours.

Are the TAs in a deprived area less likely to be well educated? Anyone know this?? 😊

No idea, there may be a general trend that could be overturned in specific regions for… reasons.

TA is not an unskilled job as they are frequently required to reach the class as PPA cover, when teachers are sick or on training. The government can put in funding for schools to have PPA teachers or cover teachers or supply teachers or they can put the funding towards TAs. Or they can just do nothing and maybe schools will just have to send kids home when they haven't got anyone to teach them. Or split them up and send them to sit in the back of another class so they can disturb more children's learning.

This is something that I am dealing with now. I am a TA. Like many I chose the role because of my child and childcare responsibilities. I have a background in HR/ corporate. I feel this issue about TA retention and staffing has been percolating in the background for the last 11 years that I have been a TA.

A major change I have noticed is that my responsibilities have more than doubled in the last decade and my pay has remained the same. I earn approximately 1100 a month for approximately 32.5 hours. I am in a secondary school. When I started my role the competition was extremely fierce for the job (in 2011 there were 150 applicants for 3 positions) now we cannot get people to apply.

My manager has resorted to asking TAs who have retired to please come back. Literally phoning them and pleading with them.That's how bad the situation is. In my opinion although the wages are low there is an understanding that it is ideal for parents due to holidays and start/ finish times. This change ( the exodus of TAs) I think began during Covid. Like many I worked in the school during Covid and worked with students whose parents were key worker's. Despite PPE I caught long covid and this became long covid. Like many I witnessed a fundamental unfairness in our working conditions. We were told we had to staff the resource centre and had to do face to face support. So my colleagues and I did this for 18 months. I know this was an unprecedented time but I think many of us were asked to shoulder the majority of the work. We were teaching maths, English and science during this time. This caused a burnout for a lot of my colleagues and they took early retirement. This is just the beginning of staff shortages for TAs in my opinion.

All my colleagues either had a Degree or significant industry experience before becoming a TA. However I have seen a fundamental shift in the qualifications of new starters. For example accepting TAs who don't have a level 2 in English or Maths but they are hired under the proviso they will have achieved it within a year. That was unheard of when I started. However we are so short staffed it leaves the school with very little option.

Time to dust off the cobwebs and have another post because I’m fed up of a lot of misinformation being spouted in this thread.

First off, very few local authority roles require specific qualification if not required by a governing body. Teachers, Architects, Quantity Surveyors, etc. They are required to operate on the basis that relevant experience can take the place of formal qualifications.

My LA, and I shalln’t give away which one, will allow TA’s to start a new position without a formal qualification if relevant experience is present. However they require the new starter to be enrolled on and complete a relevant NVQ level 3 (or equivalent) if they wish to remain employed.

For those that were talking about Maths and English, the NVQ Level 3 requires a minimum of GCSE “C” (Level 4) or Functional Skills Level 2 in both subjects.

It's just my experience that I have seen a marked shift in both the amount of TAs coming into the profession and their qualifications upon entry. This year in my school we took on a number of TA apprentices. This hadn't happened since I had started.

There has also been a general trend across all employment sectors that many have taken early retirement. I know the government is really keen to get people to reconsider and re enter the workforce. This has had a profound affect on my workplace. We have lost many TAs with years of experience and knowledge of dealing with SEN students. I am thinking of leaving but will complete this academic year as I am primarily with Year 11s and I want to see them finish.

It wasn’t directed at you. Your posts came in while I was typing.

Local authorities are willing to recruit on the basis of relevant experience on the proviso that the employee undertakes the NVQ Level 3.

It is very obvious that some people here like to throw their opinions around as facts when they haven’t the foggiest what they’re talking about. I would love to see the volunteers that would like to come to deal with my kids that need a 2:1 for staff and child safety.

I work with 12-19 year olds with extreme behaviours in a specialist LA SEN School setting.

I do feel responsible for the students I assist. Its just sometimes I feel the last one standing. I think it's because I have had about 13 leaving do's for TAs in the last year. Regarding volunteering, I think people have a misguided assumption as it relates to schools. We have had volunteers but the school policy is that they still have to complete a team teach certificate which understandably many don't want to do. In our school we have to constantly show our professional development. My colleague recently got her certification in sign language. We have to show a progression route to our manager each year. I can understand why TAs may want to leave for a supermarket job.

Leaving aside the consultation argument - it is pretty poor practice for teachers and TAs not to see children in their class full EHCP. You can’t really extract relevant bits ( partly because so many are so poorly written) as the whole document gives the context of the child and also the drivers for many of the adjustments.

Genuinely not sure why schools would do this - other than that they are weirdly documents that’s true. But I’m sure teachers are capable of residing the whole document but then identifying/concentrating on the key bits to implement.

The key relationship under the current system for EHCP is teacher/parent ( not SENCO/parent) - I don’t understand how that can work if a teacher doesn’t see the full document.

*unwieldy and reading should read

Although I guess at secondary that could be a lot of EHCPs to read

@Bea80

Often the lowest paid staff in a school and expected during COVID whilst Jenny Harris was declaring wear a mask around people you don't know , ta were expected to sit cheek by bowel to huge classes of children.

The actual teacher was on line or at the front sitting away.

Re qualifications I think it's important to remember that grade's are not an actual reflection of ability. Someone could be excellent at math's but had too much going on to concentrate or had Sen that wasn't addressed.
They could however be excellent at explaining things and able to bond with the DC and motivate them to learn.
Some people are a natural with DC .

It's been one of the comments about top uni. You may get a person armed to the absolute hilt with quals and specialities but unable to teach to others well.

So I wouldn't judge such a role based on quals necessarily because you also get tas with more experience and qualifications than the teacher.

@Ridingladybugs
I've not heard of this either? It' sounds absolutely bizzare?

The deprived areas is a good question, we live in what would be described as one and the TAs here are well qualified and often very experienced too. That said, this is my experience in 3 schools in this area so I've no idea if it is the same elsewhere.

Also totally agree with @TheRubyRedshoes

In my experience in primary the TAs who have helped my DC the most haven’t been the ones with qualifications - as noted above 2 that stand out both found school difficult themselves as kids and got in trouble. Both had also worked in EYFS. My DC would say they never made him feel guilty ( and my observation was they didn’t take any behaviour personally and didn’t try to ‘control’ my DC and see any behaviour as some sort of personal failing). As a result he trusted them and both of them turned things around for him. They also had high expectations for him and really cared about his learning ( not just stopping ‘behaviour’).

*without qualifications! Oh for an edit

Basically it's not unskilled. Cleaning is unskilled.

Schools need to be paying more than the supermarkets to retain staff. Basic economics, people with transferable skills will go to the highest paying employers.

cheek by jowel* not bowels

All also add, if someone is skilled but can get more money elsewhere then they are likely to move.

Too many employers seem to think they can pay NMW and get away with it and for a long time they did. They're was plenty Eastern Europeans happy to work for NMW at the bottom end of the job market.
Lots of employers paid NMW or very little over it. People were relying on top-up benefits to make ends meet.

The Eastern Europeans have left. Employers are starting to up the cash to retain staff.
Schools, early years, and care sector are all going to do the same thing, up the cash they offer.

Full-time 50p an hour is approximately £2000 a year.

Genuinely not sure why schools would do this

Confidentiality - at my school you are told things about kids on a strictly need-to-know basis. I’ve never seen an EHCP but I assume it contains personal or family info that I don’t need to know. My school creates its own plan based on the filtered info from the EHCP along with other stuff, giving strategies that the teacher should follow.