To think most people have no idea how little HLTAs/Teaching Assistants earn?

[LorlieS]

Anybody want to hazard a guess at the average monthly income of a ft HLTA/TA?

It really is quite shocking!

How do calculate that?

Haha I think I work in a term time nursery 39 weeks a year! So 13 weeks holiday of which I get paid for 8 as I have 18 years service.

It's pitiful what the Pupil Support Assistants are paid in my LA. Quite a few have evening jobs or deliver for local take aways.

I work 34hours a week and take home 16k a year. My school are amazing and tas all get 34 hours, 8:30-3:30 every day and 1.5 hours of PPA time to use when you want. It is hard work for not a lot of money, but I absolutely love it!

I think I’ve sent one! Many thanks.

@howshouldibehave I've never been one to work for the money, hence why I became a teacher, did that for about 15 years, then "dropped down" to SEN HLTA.
Child and YP counselling is an absolute passion of mine (my eldest son sadly needed a lot of therapy himself due to failures of the family courts) so to work in this field is a dream. If I can earn more than I am currently am (£1200 p/m) then I'll be happy.

We often have trouble with a teacher + TA, so where a class has multiple students with highly disruptive SEN it will be teacher + 2 TAs. Even then, despite all our best efforts, chaos often ensues.
(I was in a class recently with a student teacher (teaching), student teacher's tutor (assessing), the regular teacher (observing), 2 TAs (circulating) and a translator (for 2 students who speak no English).)

Oh, fair enough-all your recent posts suggest that you aren’t happy with that salary.

Posts like this are worth reading-:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/mature_students/4794703-47-retrain-for-counsellor-is-it-worth-it

Average pay for a counsellor according to bacp is less than 10k a year.

Things like this put me off doing counselling trainings, especially paying out another £9k (or £18k if over two years) of student loans.

@howshouldibehave To get out of education in the current climate will be a blessing. Returning to teaching would be my worst nightmare!!

@BarelyCoping123.. Where I've seen chaos I've also witnessed a lack of knowledge about sen.

I've seen a dc with autism labeled naughty when infact thier needs an triggers were not preempted, there was no support and that child was labeled naughty and disruptive.

I've seen bored but very bright dc wifh dyslexia playing up because they were bored because they couldn't read the board. The teacher thought giving them a coloured paper was the end of the help for dyslexia.

I've seen dc with adhd just left to it with no stragety in place at all and again called naughty.

I've also seen dc coping with trauma at home completely let down in the classroom.. I've seen an amazing ta told she mustn't use her incredible skills with proper sen training because the teacher didn't understand it and know what to do with her...

Oh, I wouldn’t recommend teaching to anyone at the moment! I did look carefully into counselling and knowing several people who have done it, would exercise caution in jumping into it as a new job path though; it’s an expensive route with an unpredictable job situation at the end. All the schools nearby are starting to utilise the EMHP NHS teams for children, which are being rolled out nationally at a rapid rate and which parents/schools can access free.

Good luck with your plan though, I hope it all works out for you.

If i only worked 6 hours a day 5 times a week for 38 weeks i would struggle too.. The low pay is because you dont work full time and for 46 weeks a year with 6 weeks annual leave. I work full time and pay for year round childcare for 2 children.

@0rangeCrush.
Some children with dyslexia don't need coloured paper, sometimes need many more colours than blue.

Many have slower processing and poor working memories which non of your points cover. Some /many do need Complex sentences broken down into chunks lots of repetition and over learning to grasp something new.

The time that takes can't possibly be covered by a teacher and needs a ta with those understanding and skills.

@howshouldibehave Thanks, I'll consider it carefully. One thing I know for sure though; being an experienced qualified teacher working as a HLTA no longer works!! In essence, I'm now cheap supply.

In my school, some of the support assistants work in the office for the rest of their time. Obviously they get paid more for that. I don’t know if they also work in the office over the summer but I know some of the staff in the office are classed as support staff and work all year round.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not perfect. But often there are not enough support staff to cover all the classes who need one. Right now I’ve only got support in maybe 4 classes per week. Some of the classes have 15 children with additional support needs. I can’t do it all; but the actual creation of resources falls on the teacher and not the support assistant.

That’s why I make sure that my resources are as ASN friendly as possible; for example the blue background, double spacing, minimal clutter, chunked learning, the structuring of my questions (getting progressively more challenging), having a predictable routine, displaying task lists, timers, differentiating success criteria (some, most and all) and so on.

I had a student who thought I didn’t differentiate because I didn’t signpost it. It helps everyone!

It then means the support assistant is freed up to help those who need it.

I worked for 12 years in a school 🤣🤣
so yes I know I got all school holidays off, and got paid over the whole year

You got paid for 39 weeks plus your holiday allowance. They just added up up the total and divided by 12 so you didn't have months when you didn't get paid.

Though I do believe that years ago TA's were paid all year round but that changed. It was a decade or more ago though.

I worked in a school for 12 years, I left 10/11 years ago and I’d never go back, I left because they were slowing reducing discipline, the badly behaved children got rewarded by going into the headteachers office and playing with LEGO and other stuff, so the children that didn’t like playtimes, were kicking off and being sent to play with toys, which was great for them and then played up some more!

I didn’t say all children need blue paper, did I? I mentioned that one particular child in one class needs blue paper. I also mentioned that all my slides have a blue background - because I can’t have six different colours on one PowerPoint slide, can I? However, all the slides are on Google classroom and they can change the slide background themself.

I was purely speaking about dyslexia in that example, I follow each child’s individual support plan.

My job is to do that, as class teacher. Most classes I teach don’t even have an assistant. I’m currently fighting to get even a period of support for one of my classes where 16 out of 29 have additional support needs. I can’t just say I’m not differentiating because it’s a support assistants job 😂

Our full time HLTA earned £22k, she’s teaching now. TAs between 10 and 14k. When I was a TA for a year before I started teaching it was £7k 🤣 £650 a month!

Yes, but they cleverly advertise the full time rate and put 'pro rata' in rtw small print somewhere....

There's full time as in 52 week contract and there's full time as in school term time. Not saying anyone works less hard than anyone else, but when it comes to working out pay and income this should be taken into account. If a TA worked 37 hours a week, on a 52 week contract with the annual leave allowance (usually 28 days) what would the take home be?

ta’s and school support staff definitely get holiday pay. As a rule they work for 39 weeks and get 7 weeks holiday pay. Then it’s added together and devided by 12 so you get paid every month

@Bertiesmum3 with that lack of comprehension, it's a good thing you don't work in a school anymore.

7 weeks holiday pay! Not in my LA that's for sure