TAs does your primary school have them?

[dhlihdhb]

Apparently our primary school has decided they wont have any TAs next year other than those with a one to one. Is that the norm? Have to say am pretty disappointed but not sure how widespread that is.

School budgets have been steadily cut. Where TAs are employed, they are often used as substitute teachers. One to one is also rare for children with SEND - it’s more common for a TA to support 2, 3, or 4 children with EHCPs.

They are fast disappearing all over, and they often don't have a permanent contract so easy to get rid of!

Completely normal unfortunately. Our school TAs are either in nursery for ratios, 1:1/1:2/1:3 with children with an ehcp or there’s one HLTA covering PPA time. That’s all that’s affordable.

Not uncommon at all, especially if the school are in a deficit budget.

There has been a massive increase in 1-2-1s so no money left for whole class TAs. DD’s class has 2 - both 1-2-1 for individual children.

We've always had TAs till now and we are meant to be in surplus. I think it's our trust that has put the pressure to cut.

We’ve been lucky. All DD’s classes so far (reception to Yr 2) have had excellent TAs. So sad to think this isn’t just standard.

We have class tas in reception& Year one. After that they are only for children with EHCPs (often not even B 1:1 but more like 1:2 or 3. There is no money for class tas.

Am guessing 1-2-1 TAs dont support the rest of the class, right? As they shouldnt. Wondering whether this has any impact on safeguarding

Yes I think it's the norm. From my class WhatsApp I don't think any of the parents realise all of the TAs in dd class are in fact her dedicated 1:1s. She has full time 1:1 in her ehcp and there is only one TA in her class. All of the kids with TA funding are spread across the year group so never mire than 1 TA in class.

I'm not going to enlighten anyone. My dd is already disliked enough

Unfortunately Teacher pay rises made it impossible for schools to have as many TA's. Teachers (and TA's) deserve to be paid a decent wage. Unfortunately the budget makes it increasingly impossible to pay everyone, so the the TA's go. This has a detrimental effect on students, but what you can do?

There is no impact on safeguarding beyond EYFS. A class teacher is expected to look after a class of 30 (KS1) and 30+ (KS2). I haven't had even a mornings-only general TA in my class for 10 years. When I'm lucky, I have a TA a morning or two a week. Whatever has happened up to now, the issue is with govt funding not your specific school. Staffing is the vast majority of a school's budget. No one is getting rid of TAs because they just don't fancy them anymore, it's because they are struggling to pay for the class teachers first and foremost.

Just going into year 4 and so far we’ve had a teacher and 2 TA’s I every class. They’ve said this will continue in the mornings but in the afternoons the TA’s will work with individual children who need extra help to catch up.

If a child has a 1:1 via an EHCP than the school will get extra funding to pay for that.

And recruitment and retention issues.

Poor pay ( term time only), poor conditions ( children’s behaviour, difficult parents, often lunch time cover a necessity), huge expectations in the role and at a time when in other jobs you can earn more with much better hours.

A TA friend has just started a wfh admin job, full year pay, time allowed for the school run (so no childcare needed), 4 days a week and earns £12,000 more than she did as a TA.

Very few applicants for jobs too.

We have 3 TAs in dds reception class that she starts in September. Think years 1 and 2 have just the one TA. Our school got extra funding for an additional TA for dds intake because they’re the covid baby year, the extra TA focuses on speech, language and social to catch them up where needed.

School has to pay the first £6000 of funding for each EHCP, so they do get extra funding but not usually enough to pay the salary of a 1:1 TA with on-costs.

Many schools are using agency TAs for this reason. I get around 10 emails a day offering TA positions and I’ve been a qualified teacher since the early 1990s.

That depends on the nature of the EHCP. In an ideal world the EHCP would be water tight (and fully funded!) making it clear the child needs x amount of 1-1 hours.

In reality what happens is the local authority uses language like “requires a level of support” which is unquantifiable and then not provide enough funds for the amount of support they actually need. Schools then need to do the best they can with what they have.

Unfortunately it's becoming increasingly common nowadays. The sim is for schools to spend 75% of their total budget in staffing costs, but with budget cut backs and the previous government not funding the pay increases they agreed, most schools are spending far far more than this. Schools are required to set a three year budget plan, and even the few schools which still have a budget surplus at the moment are highly unlikely to be in that position in another year or two. All schools have reduced their non-salary expenditure in recent years to save money. Most of the schools I work with have had multiple staffing structure reorganisations and have cut teaching staff to the legal minimum. To add insult to injury, schools thst have been forced to make teachers redundant have then got to find the redundancy costs themselves, which really reduces the impact of the savings they make in the first year. Schools aren't allowed to borrow money and are required to balance their budgets. Unfortunately the only thing that is left for most of them to do now is to reduce teaching assistant and admin staff. Schools are in a terrible position as a result of the last government.

I hope it's not a trend! I'd be in line to lose my job if it's becoming an epidemic. The school I work at has a general TA per class and several 1:1s across the school. My son's school has tonnes of TAs, both general and 1:1s. He often has 3 support staff in his class alongside the teacher

Our school has 2 per class and are currently advertising for a few extra. Employed by the academy so not LA ones

Some of my friends are TAs at another school and they’re also advertising for more

lots of people are leaving office roles and becoming TAs because NMW has gone up so much and working term time suits more families!

Not my experience at all. Every primary I know struggles to recruit. I teach in just about the most picturesque primary you can imagine (people genuinely 'oooh' when I tell them I work there) and we couldn't even get applicants for TA adverts last year.

Extremely widespread this year. Schools have no choice at the moment as they have to make cost savings thanks to the government not providing enough funding. The government has made successive teacher pay awards that schools have to honour, but the government hasn’t given the schools the money to cover this - so they have to find it from elsewhere (often not replacing TAs). There has also been very limited funding for necessary repairs such as boilers - so schools sometimes have to make economies to cover those as well.

@Harvestmoo it’s interesting that it’s so different. Mind you - I live in a poor / low salary area so being a TA on NMW and working term time is seen as the “perfect role” by a lot of people. And the TA roles are always filled very quickly! Which is evident as the school / academy updates Facebook with “sorry this position has now been filled” sort of thing!

I am literally trying to fill an office role currently where the last person left to become a TA because it’s term time and wasn’t far off what she was on salary wise. (Salaries didn’t go up when NMW went up. But that’s nothing to do with me or this thread)

Anyhoo, just sharing my experience really! ☺️