Teaching Assistants

[Floralapron]

My DP is a TA/learning mentor in a secondary school.
He went in yesterday to organise what was happening.
None of the teaching staff were in and they were told it would be them on the ‘front line’ with the vulnerable and key worker children and the teachers would be doing remote lessons from home.
They were also told their union wasn’t as strong as the teaching staff so that’s why they had no choice but to be in.

He doesn’t get paid a great deal in his role. It’s teen time only pay and so works out as almost lower than the living wage altogether. I was just really upset when I heard.

I think it makes a lot of sense. The teachers can't be running online teaching plus teaching in person.
The TAs can supervise whilst the children in school complete the same when those at home are doing.

I'm a TA in year 2 and I'm currently 8 weeks pregnant. I have just told my boss (headteacher) but I'm still waiting to hear if she wants me to go in. In normal circumstances I would go in but my pregnancy is classed as high risk. I lost two babies during lockdown, one at 6 months and another after at 7 weeks and was diagnosed with PTSD in September. I'm extremely anxious about anything happening during this pregnancy and with the rise in cases I'm not leaving the house. I have asked twice if there is any chance I can work from home but I'm just being told she will get back to me and I'm even willing to not get paid if worse comes to worse as I feel awful letting people down when I know my colleagues are in work

It's really tricky. Our school is running a 3 week rolling rota of 1 weeks on, 2 weeks off. Some staff are upset that when the TAs are off, they're off i.e. they can't work from home but are getting paid whereas when the teachers are 'off' they're working all day. We're therefore thinking of utilising TAs to make the groups at school smaller (currently around 20 kids per bubble). Teachers don't want the TAs to be at risk of course but it is true that they cannot work from home and school budgets are already stretched.

Year 6 TA. All teachers are in school in the morning, teaching the key worker/vulnerable children. They teach the same content that has been posted online with the same resources. I sit at the back of the class with my laptop and the rest of the class can message me any questions they may have about the work that has been set. They can submit partially completed work for me to look at and feed back on. I have authority to adapt work for those who are struggling (much like I would in class. In the afternoons we swap roles. I supervise the children in class (this includes delivering the lesson as per the plan, might be geography, history etc and the teacher takes over the online learning. Normally, by mid afternoon children have started to submit finished work so the teacher will mark and feedback on the completed work. Afternoons are also used for them to plan and upload work for the following day. They can do this on or off site. We are also looking at TA’s doing zoom calls with some children either 1-1 or small groups. Again, TA’s doing 1-1’s and small group work outside class is normal, only difference is we will be doing it over zoom.