Teaching assistants issue

[chatnamenotalreadyinuse]

Ds is in a year 1 class with a little girl with SEN. The girl concerned has a council funded TA for half of the day.

There is normally a TA for the full day in the year 1 class - well there has been in the past.

So in theory there should be both TAs (i.e. the SEN girl's TA and the class one) in the morning and the class TA in the afternoon but what seems to be happening is the class TA isn't there when the SEN one is.

Surely they should both be there as if she has enough SEN to have a TA assigned to her then she needs that support and the class should also have their TA?

Seems like a cheeky reallocation of resources thing to me.
Does anyone with more knowledge of this sort of thing have a view?

Just because there has been a class TA there in the past doesn't mean there will always be one - many schools are having to manage with fewer TAs now.

There could be more to it than you know about...
maybe when the TA was there for the full day she was there due to funding allocated to a child who's now moved up a year.

True Paisley.

I confess I assumed that there'd be a full time TA in year 1. I thought there was supposed to be.

I would be a bit hacked off if I were the little girl with SEN's mum and thought her TA was being used as a class TA IF that's the case though (which it might not be of course).

Do I have a right to know how many staff are in the class? Is it a fair question to gently ask in the school office?

I'd particularly like to know because I feel our class needs a FT TA - there are a lot of badly behaved kids.

I would definitely ask the school if the class has a full-time TA assigned to it.

A lot of schools are having to cut back on funding, and it is completely up to the school whether they have a TA in each class.

If the TA is there for the SEN child, she should of course be supporting her, but it doesn't have to be 1:1 the whole time. She could work with a small group which includes the SEN child. Also, if the teacher is working with the SEN child then the TA is freed up to work with another group- as the child already has adult support.

If you have concerns about the class I would approach the teacher rather than the school office. It sounds as though you are worried about behaviour, not the lack of TA in itself, so talk to the teacher about why you feel this is an issue, and you could certainly ask about TA support in that context.

Having said that, I would give it a week or two before approaching the new teacher as things are obviously still settling down.

It's a bit of both Pozzled. I worry that the level of 'bad' behaviour in the class is such that without a class TA nothing will be done!

It was certainly an issue last year, even with a full time TA as well as the little girl having her own full time TA too.

There are four or five kids who are quite disruptive, two of whom are very persistently naughty and one is involved in some sort of act of aggression at least several times a week. The latter one doesn't seem to be improving at all after a year in school .

I'm not a TA so maybe wrong. But I would think that an individual's TA could be doing all sorts around the class. There's a girl with ASD in DD's class who's just going through the process of being allocated an assistant. But it's not going to do her any favours to have someone over her all the time, changing her for PE, doing everything for her. The TA surely can't be expected to just look at her at the times when the girl needs to be doing things herself. She must be going to be doing other things to help with the general running of the class.
Like I say, I may be wrong though
And obviously it depends on the needs of that child. But chances are that TA is helping with the class as a whole a bit too.

I think she probably is helping with the whole class but the point remains that if the girl concerned has significant enough special needs to get funding for a half time TA, then she needs more support than other kids.

The teacher will be spread very thinly dealing with crowd control with others in the class who seem to have behavioural issues.

I'm afraid that you are probably right and that the school are trying to use the little girl's allocated support for the whole class. In my experience (having worked for a while in education) lots of schools do this but it will be hard to get them to admit it. It's also nothing to do with the teacher who would probably dearly love more support. My dd is in reception and there are three TA's in her class, my dd has one allocated to her due to SN, there is the normal class one and one other for another child with SN. It sounds like your school may be having funding issues.

Am I being arsey to think we should get told that sort of thing i.e. how many TAs there are in the class?

The teacher hasn't sent us a single letter or communication so far. I know it's early days but I'd expect something from her.

The TA assigned to the child is very unlikely to be just hers there will be a portion of time during the day when she works 1-1 with the child and time when she will be focused on supporting the child (assembly/p.e as examples) but for the majority of the time she will be working alongside the teacher unless the child has vv significant SEN.

She doesn't have very severe SEN Nickschick - well from what I can tell because school can't discuss it.

OT then in a way but wouldn't it be normal for a class teacher to send some sort of note home introducing themselves/ what they're doing with the kids fairly early on?

Depends on the teacher and on the school policy as to whether or not you will get a letter. As for the sen ta, actually funding doesn't work like you may think. The school is given a pot of money labelled as for use with sen pupils, this pot then has to be stretched in order to ensure provision for pupils with statements and other forms of sen. The school can allocate resources as they see fit and statements don't have to be covered by a 'named person' anymore. Therefore ta's do end up doing dual roles such as class based and one to one ta

You are slightly wrong Teacher401. If a child has a statement there is separate funding for that child's needs. If the TA can be shared does depend on the wording of the statement. Most of the time the TA would help other children, but in some cases (certainly in my DCs school) the child really does need 1 on 1 support full-time to be in school.

However it is really the parent of the child with SEN's responsibility to deal with this issue. Yo can mention that you are surprised that there doesn't seem to be a class TA full-time anymore.

I know that band 2 funding allowed a child about 20 mins per day 1-1.

School action plus was money available to the entire school to help children facing difficulty for short periods.

That was a while ago though.

chatnamenotalreadyinuse,

Pozzled is right, and furthermore, the current government looks set to move away from TAs altogether. I have seen several influential leaders in the TES and there's a thread on mumnsnet somewhere about this.

Don't know the ins and outs, but it's a definite shift in policy, supported, conveniently, by research that has suddenly materialised overnight 'proving' that good teachers don't need TAs.

(I'm paraphrasing - and - speaking as a parent, I don't agree).

So I wouldn't get too focussed on the issue, as it's seemingly only a question of time before TAs, if they survive at all, are a very stretched resource indeed.

My dd has a statement and subsequently a TA for 20 hours pw this is in addition to the general classroom TA whose role is entirely different.
My dd's TA's first responsibility is supporting dd and meeting the needs outlined on her statement.
At times dd's TA works with a group including dd after all turn taking and sharing with children can't be done without other children.
But dd's TA wouldn't be organising materials for the class and directly supporting another child at dd's expense because dd's statement wouldn't be met then and I would have to complain.
I think it's quite difficult though if you have parents who are unaware, a woolly statement, a less than confident TA and a teacher trying to take advantage.

I dont think its the teacher taking advantage so to speak I think the support needed in a classroom alongside the tasks that need to be done can be way too much for 1 teacher and 1 TA.

When I used to volunteer in school the majority of my 'spare time' was spent putting up backing paper for displays,backing work for displays,getting the craft things ready etc etc pairing lost pumps these are all things a Ta and a teacher have to try and find time to do.

I think school life can be a lot harder than you might anticipate.

Unless you know for sure the exact makeup of where this TA's hours come from you're being pretty harsh on the teacher.

I say that because I had a TA who had an approximately 75/25% split of her time allocated to the class whereby 75% of her hours were funded by and allocated to supporting a statemented child with SEN, and the school had topped her hours up by another 25% which was time paid for by the school directly for a class-linked TA. To an outsider it might have looked like I was somehow "taking" the statemented child's time when she was being used on other tasks - but in reality, those hours were her class-TA hours, not her SEN-TA hours. I wasn't "diddling" anyone - I had both banks of hours carefully accounted for in her timetable and in my planning, playing it absolutely by the book that the statemented child got every single hour they were entitled to.

In reality though - quite often any good TA, while working with a statemented child, will also be supporting other children near that child as well. I've always been told that's perfectly acceptable as long as the statemented child is within the group recieving that support.

It's quite possible that the "class TA" has had her hours cut with the economic mess to be honest and they're having to share her with another class. Nothing at all to do with the statemented hours - just budget squeezes.

It is trying to take advantage when a TA's 20 hours are to support a child that has a quantified and specified statement.
My daughter's TA is only in her class 20 hours, those 20 hours are accounted for in her statement.
At no point in her statement does it mention TA support is to be used to do class organisation, photocopying or anything else similar so her TA shouldn't be asked to do it.If she was asked then a teacher would be trying to take advantage of the additional adult in her class.
I have no wish for my dd to have 1 to 1 support for all her 20 hours because that would be isolating and not meeting the terms of her statement which states that small groups to be used at particular instances for a specific amount of time in order to enhance dd's social skills.
I would however object if the TA was photocopying and sharpening pencils or washing paint pots.
It doesn't happen in dd's class because the class has a classroom TA and dd's statement is specified and quantified, her TA is very well aware of her role and specialises in ASD and her teacher is very efficient and also aware that I know that dd's statement is watertight and know the means of address should it not be adhered to.
Not all statemented children are so fortunate though and if a parent doesn't make it their business to find out what a statement should look like and how to ensure that it is met then children are short changed.

nickschick "I dont think its the teacher taking advantage so to speak I think the support needed in a classroom alongside the tasks that need to be done can be way too much for 1 teacher and 1 TA.

When I used to volunteer in school the majority of my 'spare time' was spent putting up backing paper for displays,backing work for displays,getting the craft things ready etc etc pairing lost pumps these are all things a Ta and a teacher have to try and find time to do."

Whilst I might agree that it may be more than the classroom TA and the teacher can handle.
In no way is it acceptable to use the services of my dd's TA to complete such tasks.
Her time is accounted for in the statement so she doesn't have time to do tasks not directly pertaining to dd and she specialises in ASD children so she should be using her talents in the area in which she is employed.
I'm afraid if the teacher and TA don't have time for the small but time consuming tasks that you mention then they should ask for classroom volunteers like yourself.

chatnamenotalreadyinuse the ratio in Reception Y1 and Y2 is One teacher to 30 children any additional staff is purely at the school's discretion and budget permitting.

Depending on the needs of the child allocated TA support it may have been decided her needs are better met by not allowing her to become too dependent.

Another possibility occurred to me. TA support does not have to be in-class. It could be that the class has the same amount of TA time (ie full time as well as the SEN support) but rather than staying in class, the TA will take small groups out. This can still help with behaviour as children who find it hard to concentrate might be taken out for small group work some of the time. Also, it means it doesn't have to be the same TA all the time, someone who has experience of speaking and listening could run a group for that and so on.

I also disagree that behavioural issues and TA support are necessarily linked. A competent teacher with consistent rules and back up from management should be able to deal with most behaviour issues, with or without a TA.

asdx2 ....I have to point out that even though I volunteered in the classroom as a mum helper...I am also a qualified NNEB nursery nurse-so just finding lost plimsolls and putting up backing paper isnt my only 'talent' and I chose to do those tasks knowing thats where a lot of teacher/TA time is saved.

CAT64 ...when I was employed in schools we were not legally able to do the register for some weird reason???