Should all teaching assistants be "phased out"?

[frickfo]

The government has cancelled the entire budget for training teaching assistants. And one of it's favourite think tanks, Reform, is proposing most TA jobs are axed to save £1.7b .
If you think teaching assistants are too valuable to lose from our schools please support this campaign.
weneedtas.blogspot.com/

Given there will not be any increase in trained teachers to make up the shortfall, I will definitely sign.

New link (I hope):

here

Sorry, that should have said "one of its favourite think tanks". Please don't report me to the apostrophe protection society.
And the campaign web site is weneedtas.blogspot.com/

done it

done

signed!

Have signed. This is frighteningly short sighted and would surely end up costing many times more than it saves because people will end up with a far poorer education and non-academic needs will get neglected.

Signed.

signed.

As a Teaching Asssitant this is disgusting and the first i 'v heard!
The number of children we have to support now with learning difficulties is the highest its oever been. The Goverment fails to grasp that these are the adults of tomorrow we need to guide them before they reach their teens, there are children with Emotional and behavioural problems in every class, the teacher cannot cope without a TA in there the classes are over-loaded.
When is the goverment going to realise the Education System is the most important tool we can use to make a country a great one for future. We should all do protests and rallies to get the goverment to listen ! Signed sealed and delivered..

Signed. TAs are all fantastic in DSs school.

NO,NO,NO....Amy W said in different circumstances.
I think we need teaching assistants to back up the fully qualified teachers. Who need help, especially at controlling classes in UK.

If I was younger, I would like to be an assistant myself; but water has passed under the bridge; and one tied up with other things, (not literally)
Please Dave and Clegg-over, keep cuts to a minimum; especially for people in harsh circumstances. Numbe 10 should be reading Mumsnet.

I thought this would set the world alight.
hmmmmmmNext time

I have checked, and it is said someone from Number 10 does do checks on Mumsnet sites. (So they should, it is a relevant forum)

Done- our school has just started using TAs to cover PPA time. They were supposed to be getting extra training to become HLTAs to improve skills.

Now we are told that the training will not be funded and our school has no extra money for this as we have already had to make people redundant due to recent slashes in school budgets. So now we have untrained unqualified TAs teaching children for one tenth of their school week.

We have many special needs children at our school (around a third of the whole school are on the SN register and 12 of these have statements)most of whom make fabulous progress due to the additional reading groups and catchup strategies they run. We also have an enhanced provision for deaf children (another 10 statemented children)many of whom would not cope or reach their potential in a mainstream class without their TA support.

Yes 23 years ago when I first started teaching we didn't have as many TAs as now but there again many of the special needs children we now accomodate would have been educated in special schools.

How the government could seriously contemplate phasing out teaching assistants is beyond belief.

This defies belief! So they're happy to spout their commitment to education and mending 'broken Britain' but anyone who can actually contribute to this is to be royally shafted at every turn! I despise this coalition. TAs should be getting a payrise not having their role phased out! This cabinet of millionaires can afford private tutors for their children so there is no empathy here as usual.

I'm a TA too! I agree with tigertiger09, I have signed and put the link on my facebook page too!

I am a teacher. When I started teaching (15 years ago) there was 1 TA for the whole school. Each class got 1 hour a week and the time was always valued and used wisely. Now all classes have a full time TA and the teachers have become deskilled, overreliant on the TA and lazy. They now moan if they have to do even 1 lesson without a TA. I dont think all TAs should be scrapped but they could certainly be reduced in number to say half. The other thing is that often less able children are given a TA and as a relult rarely get attention from the teacher if at all. Now some TAS are fantastic but this varies a great deal and they often have poor spelling and grammar. It is hardly fair to put the poorer children with the less qualified staff. The TAs also make the less able children become over reliant on them and they often learn very little.

DS2 is starting school next week (gulp) and he has one class mate with Autism and another with selective mutism in a class of 30. How on Earth would a teacher be able to cope with all that by her/himself?

Yes, benandoli, but then inclusion came along, and teaching assistants became vital. And it's up to the teacher to ensure that he/she works with the less able children for an appropriate amount of time per week.

Where I do agree with you is in variance of quality of teaching assistants - some are excellent, but some TAs' grammar/spelling is so atrocious that often I don't know where to start.

benandoli we still only have one TA for the whole school.

Do you not have many statemented children then, mrz?

We have 4 statemented children with 2 SEN support assistants

Ahhh. We would call those TAs also in my school.

They do a very different job to our TA. Providing physiotherapy Occupational therapy and SaLT (Makaton)rather than classroom support