To only have a qualified teacher 3 days a week?

[Goalhappy]

My son is in primary school KS2, for the past 2 years he has had his main teacher 4 days a week and a different teacher on a Friday, slightly annoying but it is what it is. Since Easter the Friday is being covered by 2 teaching assistants, not a teacher. Not particularly liked this but seemed temporary.
now we’ve found out next school year, he will have a main teacher 3 days a week, and the 2 other days covered by 2 teaching assistants together.
Is this allowed? For teaching assistants to be permanently leading a class almost half the week?
(absolutely nothing against teaching assistants, most are brilliant and some more experienced than a teacher.)
It’s more the inconsistency that bothers me, he really struggles with confidence and anxiety and that relationship with his teacher really matters as the whether he feels comfortable enough to stay calm and able to learn.
Is there an external body I can raise the issue to? Am I being unreasonable to be bothered by this?

Are the TAs in the class all week? They will have a level of consistency if so. Are the class having other input on those days eg gym, music, art etc which could be delivered by a specialist with T A support?

Saying that, I would find the lack of a teacher for half the week very strange and I'm a teacher!

Ask for clarification on how the two day are covered and structured, is the teacher setting work for TAs to deliver? Where is the growth in those days? Nothing against TAs but it's the teachers job to teach not theirs.

The TAs should be going to their union, why should they be teaching on a TA salary....

Are they TAs or HLTAs?

YANBU.
Although I imagine the school don’t like it either, and they can’t find a teacher who’ll do two days a week.

As a PP has said, they might be arranging the weekly timetable so that some of the time for those two days is covered by other teachers eg at my DDs’ school they have a specialist PE teacher and a specialist music teacher.

At my eldest's first school they had a teacher job share, which actually worked brilliantly, as the two teachers worked well together and had different strengths. So not having the same teacher all week, I wouldn't be concerned with.

Having 2 TAs for half the week does feel like a problem though - are the TAs not technically supposed to be there to support particular children? Or are they literally being employed as teacher substitutes? (I'd be surprised that the TAs don't have a problem with it too TBH)

Strange set up, even if they are HLTA’s they shouldn’t be timetabled to have full class responsibilities for 2 days a week. That’s a teachers job. Sounds like the school is trying to cut costs.

i don’t think I’d like this either.
of course there’s been times a TA has had to cover for a meeting etc but it’s always only been one or two lessons.

I wouldn’t be ok with this. The children should have a teacher. And I doubt the TAs like it either. It doesn’t speak well of the management set up or staff harmony if this is their policy, no one on the teaching staff will be pleased about this (though they’ll just get on with it as they have no choice).

We've had similar to this. Last year DS had a HLTA lead the class 1.5 days a week i.e. the teacher worked 4 days and had half a day PPE. This year, similar seems to be happening due to his teacher having other responsibilities/courses meaning she is out the classroom a lot. It's unclear to parents, but has likely been 2 days a week added up.

It's definitely not ideal. It's more planning for the teacher and more responsibility (without the same pay) for the TA. However it hasn't caused us an issue. DS seems to know the timetable and is happy with the group of adults leading his class. For my DC there are some pros of working with different adults. When the teacher is off for another reason, they can usually cover with someone from their familiar 'team'.

I don't think you can complain, or at least it won't get you anywhere, but you can ask about consistency e.g. with behaviour management, to make sure your DS is well supported.

I imagine it’s a cost saving exercise. The school I currently work at (not for much longer) is doing similar from September. TAs will be utilised in a teaching capacity more often and interventions will be across the whole day. I can see AI being slotted into this in the future too as my class teacher said sometimes the only thing that will guarantee the whole class focuses, is when looking at a screen.

Even if they had a full time teacher, half a day per week would be PPA cover, which is often provided by a HLTA. So that leaves 1.5 days.

I’d be questioning what the plan was for English and Maths on those two days. If a teacher is planning work and the HLTAs are just delivering it, I wouldn’t be concerned. Weekly plans can be done so that 1-2 lessons a week are consolidating skills rather than teaching new concepts.

If the majority of those two days are things like PSHE, MFL, Computing and PE, I wouldn’t be concerned. HLTAs can do training to be specialised in those things, or there could be dedicated PE and MFL teachers who hop around classes.

I’d want to find out more about the rationale and practical plans, could you arrange a meeting or phone call with the Headteacher to discuss? They may have some solid plans for specialist teachers to come in and teach with TA support for consistency on those days (we have Music, Spanish and DT delivered this way, and in the past also PE and Computing). However, ultimately, school funding and therefore staffing is so so tight - it might be your MP that you need to raise this with (once you have a bit more info).

Blame the government. They’ve agreed a pay rise and then told schools they have to fund it out their existing budgets. At a time when costs such as energy bills are also rising and their budgets aren’t increasing at the same rate. Guess schools have to cut teaching hours to save money 🤷‍♀️

Unless the school is local authority maintained (if you’re in England) then schools aren’t required to have qualified teachers. Many academies and private schools hire unqualified teachers and often parents wouldn’t know it because that’s all they did. I’ve seen in a lot of secondaries where TAs were later giving classes to teach because it was their subject specialism.

As a parent you have every right to raise concerns about your child’s education. I think given this was the case last year and is again next year I would ask if the school had plans to recruit a teacher for the remaining two days (my son’s school has a few job shares with 3+2 or even 3+3). But keep in mind if it’s an academy there might not be a lot you can do to push back.

This is an important question.

Wait till you get to secondary, my middle DS didn't have a physics teacher for the whole of Year 10, had various cover supervisors while they watched physics videos on YouTube!

The hats exactly what’s happened which is why lots of staff have lost their jobs.

YANBU but this is going to become a regular sight across schools in the coming years because of the recruitment and retainment crisis. The vast majority of newly qualified teachers are giving up after a year or so and the more experienced ones are leaving the profession in droves.

If the teacher is part-time they won’t be lesson planning for the days they aren’t there.

When I was working as a TA I ended up in charge of a class for the best part of a year, with another TA rotating in to help, while the class teacher was off for cancer treatment.

Only going to get more common with yet another not fully funded teacher pay rise, and teacher recruitment/retention crisis (so schools can’t afford to hire new teachers even if there were any to hire!)

There must be loads of teachers who want 2 days a week because those jobs are rare and numbers of teachers with kids of their own are high

makes no sense. Write to the head asking why

I think this also comes down to how much classroom experience the TA/HLTA has. I would take a TA with 20 years experience over an NQT any day. This isn't a first choice for schools nor is it the first choice for the TAs either. They are paid a pittance for what they do and even in teaching capacity their increase is minimal.

My concern would be the core subjects which always take place on a morning, so maths and English. I would be asking the school about that. What should be happening is the teacher provides the lesson plan and also a teacher should mark the English work. It is easy to mark primary level maths work it is more difficult to assess levels in written work.

Are they qualified teachers who work as TAs? In our school we have some teachers who work/paid as TAs for 1 day a week and then paid to work as a teacher 1 day a week.

Thank you so much for everyone’s opinions. Some good points raised and things I need to find out. It would have been nice had a communication gone out explaining if/how the disruption will be minimised like some have suggested about outsourced lessons. Without me having to go digging for it and feeling like a nuisance!

I'm a primary school teacher and yanbu. The school will be doing it to save money and are very likely to be paying the TAs on an HLTA rate rather than an unqualified teacher rate. I was in a similar position once where I worked 0.8 but the school covered the rest with a TA but didn't expect them to do any planning or marking and I still had to do all reports etc. There are plenty of teachers who want to work part time so it would have been easy to recruit a job share in your DS's situation.