Correcting Teaching Assistant's grammar and spelling

[UpSheGoesJosephine]

If you were a TA in a primary school, would you be comfortable correcting a fellow TA if they spelt something incorrectly or used bad grammar. Such as, 'I done this' or pacific instead of specific.

Probably not, but I do. I've never heard anyone say this in real life. Anti-Essex commentary gets pretty boring.

Make a joke about how you're bad at spelling or whatever. Give a few examples of words/rules you hate. Once they are laughing and agreeing, point out one of their issues and say something like: "I've got called out on this one so many times that I'm pretty sure it's meant to be xyz". Maybe still be a little unsure. Google together. Laugh and say omg what are we like.

I would tell the class teacher who is responsible for learning in the TA’s classroom.

TAs in our school must have English and maths gcses at grade c (or equivalent). Where is employing uneducated TAs and where exactly are they finding these uneducated people in 2026?

Badly educated? Need a C in English and Maths. I'm educated to degree level and know at least 5 more of my colleagues are too.

That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be pointed out. They should speak correctly in front of the children. “I done” makes me cringe.

I would have been fuming at this - still waiting to hear if you said something @Growlybear83

Yes, my mum cant pronounce certain words and my OH really struggles with particular words. He would probably say pacific. He cant pronounce pistachio for example. P words I think he struggles with.

This isn’t true. Many TAs join the education sector when their own children start school, choosing to give up well paid Corporate jobs for less stress and more family time and to be available during school holidays.

Seriously? Is this really your honest and totally ignorant belief?

This happened close to the end of term, and was the culmination of a really bad term with an awful teacher who had moved up with the class from Year 1. I made appointments to look at two other schools the next day, and moved my daughter. I explained to the head exactly why I was moving schools and showed her the exercise book.

**

I still have the exercise book!

Yep. Former actuary here who is working as a TA because it fits better with family life. Over the last 2 years my fellow TAs have included 2 accountants, 2 with health science degrees and 6 who are working as a TA while studying to become a teacher.

Anyway to answer the original question, I don't correct spoken English and if it's written I pick and choose what I correct. If it's something they are copying from the board I will correct it. I'm currently working with a teacher who has admitted to the class that he is a terrible speller (he's an awesome teacher though!) and the other day he was working on writing on butcher's paper for a brainstorming activity in English. It wasn't being copied by the students and I felt correcting the spelling would detract from the activity they were actually doing so I didn't correct it. I often find that teachers get to know I'm a good speller and tend to ask me when they don't know how to spell something.

Yes, I'd correct these things. They're around children who need to be taught correctly, and they can't teach if they don't know themselves.

Honestly, some teachers are dreadful these days - my secondary school child's English teacher didn't know the difference between hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes, pronounced 'fascism' as 'face-ism', and (knowing one of my child's 'special interests' is the English language) has asked them to explain things such as the correct usage of single vs double speech marks to other students, as the teacher didn't know.

In fact, half of my children's teachers use AI to create and mark work, which is just pathetic - good teachers are few and far between. Although I can't blame the good ones for leaving the profession, as it's hardly a pleasant working environment.

Woah. That's terrible! But I have met a few myself. In a lesson where the teacher taught Y2s that adverbs can often be made by adding -ly to adjectives, we ended up with the word 'fastly' written on the board 🤔

Correct re badly paid but incorrect re badly educated. Many where I work are ex teachers or other degree level professionals, myself included. I’ve had to correct the spelling of teachers I’m working for several times. I have at times had more teaching years under my belt than those I’m working for too. TAs are increasingly being landed with more responsibilities, we are no longer an army of paint pot washing mums. Hard to believe given the pay but true. Frankly I think this is going to need to change as the requirements of the job don’t match the pay and with the changes coming into SEND there are going to be recruitment issues.

Oh and I absolutely would correct any spelling errors from a fellow TA, that is hugely important and I’m sure they’d welcome it.

May I ask how you dealt with that?

Lots of teachers can't spell or use incorrect grammar.

@TheSunIsAlwaysThere I say pacific as I can’t pronounce specific. And yes English is my first and only language 😬

I would correct anything written down that is incorrectly spelled if a child could see it.
Would not correct a spoken ‘would of’ in conversation as it’s rude to trip people up like that imo - but I would ensure I repeated it back correctly.
I am a teacher.

But they are educating your children. As a teacher, I would correct a colleague.

So? That doesn't make it ok.

Me too. Young kids pick things up quickly - my son started saying “them two” instead of “those two” because of the low literacy of his particular TA. Moved yeargroups, better educated TA, it disappeared.

NDN has a degree and is one. She does it because she’s a single mum so needed hours to fit around her kids. In her shoes I’d have done the PGCE but everyone has different aspirations I guess. She has lots of support so would be able to make that work but obviously happier with less stress and hours I suppose…

That aside, I’d correct anything that could impact the children’s learning so if there’s a chance the children might copy and think specifically is pacifically, I’d have to say something.