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?

That’s dreadful and sadly I’m unsurprised. It’s gone beyond what the original point of the cover supervisor’s job was. We had a supply teacher for almost half of year 10 for one of my options subjects. He had no knowledge of the subject and seemed to have a habit of pointing that out every lesson 😆. Nonetheless he was a qualified teacher at least, and we were given work to get on with.

For 1 school year I worked as a cover supervisor at a secondary school 17 years ago and yes, there were certain teachers, whose classes I seemed to cover more regularly than others. Covering a class for an entire academic year though?

Is it an academy? I have a feeling they are allowed to have unqualified teachers.

I would still consider entering a formal complaint. Is Ofsted likely to come into the school? I suspect they may not be impressed.

Yes that’s right it is an academy, I had never realised it meant they could do as they pleased!
They have had ofsted in definitely the last year or so, I’m guessing they aren’t expected!

Currently the 2 covering Friday’s are not in the class at all the rest of the week.

thank you for the insight there are some good questions I will raise.

Yes completely agree, seems extremely unfair to the TA’s

It is possible at least one of the TAs is a qualified teacher, quite a few teachers have switched jobs to become TAs in an attempt to reduce workload, stress but still remain in education. However, this will have backfired if they are now being expected to teach

This is not ideal. Schools won’t usually be making this choice lightly. Not fair on anyone though

Yanbu at all. Years ago PPA/ training/ management responsibilities would have been covered by a qualified teacher. In some schools this was a semi retired teacher or a part time teacher who would only work 2.5 days a week or mornings or afternoons only.

Unfortunately our schools are so underfunded they have started using TAs and HLTAs to fill those gaps. Academies and private schools have always been able to do as they like in regard to qualified teaching and support staff.

In many cases a lot of HLTAs are actually qualified teachers who have taken HLTA jobs for the lighter workload - no or very reduced planning/ prep/ marking/ parent consultation/ EHCP meetings ect. It is entirely unfair however to expect them to be teaching full classes in place of a teacher and should be paid accordingly for that.

We have similar happening this year, my DD has one of the deputy heads who is acting up as head this year until March when the headteacher returns from Maternity leave. From what has happened this year since the deputy head stood up as acting head and the meet the teacher yesterday it seems she will have her teacher 3 days and then 2 days she will have a HLTA and TA. The class TA they have this year is going up with them and is herself a HLTA so one day they will have 2 HLTAs and then the other day they will have the class TA. From what I gather from other parents whose children currently have the deputy head on on of her release days it's P.E (taken by a coach), French (the subject specialism of the HLTA), Art/ DT and R.E. Maths is a recap/ consolidation day and phonics goes on as normal as they are in small groups across ks1 and go to their usual group leader and whoever is covering deputy head takes their group. I'm going to see what it looks like in September and as we hope it is only a temporary arrangement willing to long it out. If however DD suffers I will raise it.

We've lost 5 TAs this year at our school. Only DDs class and the other deputy head's class (who is acting head teacher the other days when DDs teacher is in class) have a general class TA. The other classes only have a LSA if a student in their class has a 1:1. We are losing a member of office staff who isn't been replaced. 1 HLTA is floating across all classes doing interventions all day. The other HLTA is PPA cover.

My friend works at a different school and it is the same there. Only TAs in classes acting as LSAs for students with EHCPs and then strictly the hours on their EHCP. They have all had to drop down to 3 or 4 days in order to retain all their jobs. 1 HLTA covering all PPA/ management time. Only 1 class will have a general class TA and that class has a lot of learning and behaviour support and health needs.

Not acceptable. As a reason why. Post apartheid South Africa promoted all of the mainly black teaching assistants to be full teachers, without providing any training or education for them...not their fault but the last time I visited in 2011, 800 schools had no kids that graduated at 18....I spoke to a qualified teacher about it and it was clearly in the schools where there very few or no qualified teachers