to think the school are taking advantage of these volunteer "Teaching Assistants"?

[MoomieAndFreddie]

My friend is doing a "teaching assistant" course, its just 2 days college work a month. She is unemployed and a single mum to 2 dc at the school. Yet she works at the school nearly full time as a teaching assistant - but doesn't get paid anything for it.

And I recently found out there were four other mums who do exactly the same as well - unpaid TA volunteers - and thats in DS's year alone.

I have no problem with my DC being helped by these mums, they are lovely and I am sure they are more than capable. And of course its great there are lots of staff around to help the DCs.

But I think its a bit unfair on the mums that volunteer tbh. If they need FT TA's they should be paying them. I mean, fair enough, you could argue they are gaining valuable experience to try and move into a paid TA role, but my guess is there will be next to no roles available anyway, as no school is going to be employing new TA's when they can get them for free? I dunno, it just doesn't sit right with me, smacks a bit of exploitation.

[SilveryMoon]

At the last school I worked at, we had a number of volunteers there. Volunteers weren't allowed to be left on their own with a child, weren't taken into account for ratios on school trips or out on playground duty and were not able to assist children with toileting/nappy changing.
In this kind of sense, the volunteer gets more out of the placement than the school does. the school still have to pay for a member of staff to make up the ratios and to do things the volunteers weren't allowed to.
I think this shows that volunteers aren't being exploited (as well as schools coverin g their arses)

[amillionyears]

op,I think I am right in saying she has to do a minimum of 6 hours per week.
Have you asked her whether she has checked how many hours she has to do at the school each week? she may be choosing to volunteer for more weeks than she has to. Alternatively,she may have got it wrong about how volunteer hours she has to do. Alternatively, I may have got it wrong

[eBook]

"When people do work for free it undermines the labour market. Why pay a TA if you can exploit a series of people who you don't pay?"

^ This.

[ihearsounds]

There are lots of people who think that being a ta is very easy. Doesn't help that in media at times we are portrayed as under worked and overpaid lol.
When I initially trained, I had to do x hours in the school. But depending on what I had going on, I would volunteer to do more hours. Not only did I get more experience than being there for 2 days a week I think it was, but it also looked good on my reference from the head.

[OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos]

Volunteer TAs who are undergoing training are very different from volunteer parent helpers.

OP, your friend who is doing the TA course will be working as part of her own qualification. The other you are talking about might just be being parent helpers. Do you actually know the arrangement?

[Mayisout]

I was at an adult literacy training course and just said that there are so many retired or unemployed people who could help out children after school with, well anything really, sport, learning tables etc but got put in my place by a qualified and paid literacy support chap who said it was taking away jobs that should be paid for (he was a union member) so - the kid's miss out but hey ho.

[AThingInYourLife]

"How can it be exploitation if you are happy to do something?No-one was forcing me!"

Plenty of people allow thrmselves to be exploited willingly. That doesn't make it right.


If only people in a position to work for free can afford to be TAs, we are excluding a lot of potentially talented candidates.

Being able/willing to work for free is no indicator of quality in an applicant.

[OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos]

People working at the school for free will not be doing everything that a paid TA is dong unless they are in training.

[alemci]

What about all the people who help with things like Scouts, charity shops, fundraising. Are they being exploited. Not everything is about monetary value.

Sometimes if you train to do something, you have to do some voluntary work. I think the way the job market is, this is what will happen alot.

look at the students who have loads of debt but still have to try and get some employment by working for a company for free.

If your friend is unemployed then doesn't she get money from the state to look after her and her 2 children? At least she can do something like this and have training rather than having to eventually do another job she may not want to do

[jamdonut]

I was always counted in the adult ratio to children when I was a parent helper, and I was allowed to sit in the corridor hearing a child read. I wasn't allowed to be left in the classroom with all the children.
When I was a trainee TA, I was treated more or less identically to the other TA's. I was an extra pair of hands at the time...there wasn't a position available at that time, so I was not taking a job away from anyone. I had to wait for them to decide they needed more permanent TA's before I could apply for a job...I had to go through the same selection procedures as all the other applicants.