How does this set up work?

[candlelight2]

I'm not too familiar with primary school teaching. We have just visited the school we might want to send DD to. They teach literacy and numeracy in the mornings by mixing the classes in key stage 1 and splitting them into ability groups (smaller than the class size of 30). I would guess that we saw 5 or 6 groups made up of 90 children in total. Some of these groups were being led by teaching assistants. I'm not very familiar with the use of teaching assistants in this way.

If you have a set up like this, how does it work? Do the groups vary who leads them or is there the potential for a child to be led for a long period by a TA? How are the TAs trained and supervised? Who plans the sessions? How is assessment done and how does the class teacher maintain responsibility for the progress of a child when the children are split like this?

I know we should have asked some of these questions when we were there, but they didn't occur to me and the question I did ask about who sets what they do made it sound like a collective exercise.

it's the same in Dd' s class - year 1. seems to work really well as the ta s are excellent.

The teachers will have planned the work and the TAs (if they're anything like the ones in our school) will be very highly trained and have lots of experience in teaching small groups under the direction of the teachers.

this is how it works in DS1's school and while I have no real idea of how good the TA's are etc he has learned to read and write so I guess they know what they are doing

Hi - retired TA (male) here :

I worked over twenty years in KS1, starting as a parent helper, one day a week for 5 years when our DS started in Reception. I then got a post as TA in a different school, just Infants; mostly in Yr2 classes I also worked in Nursery, Reception and Yr1.

It can be more efficient for a child's learning if they are in smaller groups, and these days you are fortunate if a school still has the resources to support small groups under TAs. The planning and assessment would be the responsibility of the class teacher; schools will vary as to how much the TA is involved in this - it is sometimes the less confident teacher who wants to keep full control, while the most talented teachers who KNOW their own strengths, as well as the abilities of their support staff, are happy to share or delegate. Obviously, the ultimate responsibilities rest with the teacher. Small groups enable the TA and children to get to know each other better, and the strengths, weaknesses and other factors can be scrutinized and taught in greater depth. Sometimes a child might be worried or unwell; in a full class a teacher may not notice, whereas a TA with a small group might sense something was wrong. (I once had a Yr2 girl I knew was not 'herself' yet she insisted she was OK; eventually she admitted to me she was worried about her pregnant mother who was unwell at the time.)

Admittedly, this last example doesn't have much to do with the actual teaching of literacy or numeracy, but I think good school staff take a child's welfare, confidence and sensitivity into consideration, in addition to academic ability and progress. It is good, in your case, that lit and num are taught in the mornings when children are, hopefully, fresher. It also allows for a wider spread of differentiation, so the most able Yr1s can work at a Yr2 level, while less able Yr2s are not pushed beyond their level of understanding and ability.

So, provided it is done well, it should provide a very good learning experience.

You really need to ask the school those questions. Best practise is that all children will get access to qualified teacher time and that the qualified staff will do all the planning. But each school will organise things slightly differently.

Daughters new school does this. There are 5classes in entire primary and they have 5 letters and sounds groups.

Where as in her older larger school was

2-3groups per class.

my ddyear 2 and found some year 1s and some year 3s in her group.

Her new school use tas really well to do smaller one to one help with guided reading and reading.

guess easier teach by ability than age as ability can be wide.

I do get the points about splitting into smaller groups to aide differentiation, I am sure that is a good thing.

I think the bit that I am confused about most is that the pupils in a group will come from the classes of 3 teachers. Who then is delegating to the TA? And who is monitoring the progress of those pupils? Is it done collectively and, if so, how can the identified class teacher monitor the progress of one of their students who they may only lead in literacy/numeracy once or twice a week (assuming they rotate around)? I don't understand how continuity is maintained either.

I don't understand what your problem is to be honest. In effect the TA will feed back to the teacher what the outcomes of any work set was, and any work that is done will be marked by the class teacher therefore they are able to monitor easily the progress of the class. Teachers and TAs work very closely and share all information. TA's will teacher what they are asked to teach/test on by the teacher.

I think you're over thinking this, the staff talk to each other constantly about pupils and every teacher will know what their class of.

I understand how teachers work with TAs when they are working in pairs, but this set up will mean that the TAs have to feedback to 3 teachers and the teachers have to feedback to each other as the groups are made up of children from 3 different classes. Also which teacher gives the instructions to a TA for a particular group given that the TA will have pupils from 3 different classes?

and yy to over thinking. Why not just see how it goes and deal with any issues as they arise? As I say my DS1 has learned to read and write and aged 7 he is doing well and enjoying school

DD doesn't go to this school yet, we are trying to decide where to apply for and part of the difference between this school and others we are looking at is this set up. The other schools have classes taught by the class teacher with differentiation happening within that class and possibly some TA time available, so much like primary school was when I went. This is different and I want to know how it works as I can see some real benefits in terms of differentiation, but I am not sure if there are drawbacks in terms of continuity and the collective ownership of progress across a number of teachers and TAs.

candlelight2:

First of all - as others have said - banding into ability groups and mixing years is not uncommon. Although I would suggest that initially in Class R, your DD is likely to work only within this age group.

I think you are presuming that every incremental improvement is monitored - and the reality is that monitoring progress (at least at our school) is much less refined than that. I also think that allowing bright Y1 pupils and struggling Y2 pupils to work freely within their ability level and not be the one racing ahead/ lagging behind is easier on both the school and the child.

I'm only a parent, but from what I can work out the TA role is basically to carry out work assigned by a teacher with a particular group (one which may require more support/ guidance or one which due to personalities needs a member of staff to keep them on task). The teacher will most likely move about from group to group - observing general group work and individuals. The teacher (and remember there are 30 pupils) will also have to work closely with individual children to observe achievement of targets/ tasks. [I rather suspect when you visited the teacher was not teaching but talking to your group - probably normally they would be moving about, working with children, recording progress, etc...].

At our school upper ability groups usually work independently with minimal teacher/ TA oversight or input. Maybe once a week and TA/ Teacher will sit through literacy/ numeracy hour with them and really monitor how they're working & understanding. These upper ability groups are also very clear that they can ask for help when they don't understand an assignment or there's a problem - and they do.

So the reality is that TAs (which will have learning support training - but many TAs are actually fully qualified teachers) are just that extra pair of hands to move things along.

If the school is boxing clever they will know that some TAs are particularly good at aiding children at certain stages. For instance teaching phonemes (letter sounds - maybe they're very funny with the hand motions/ songs, maybe they are very patient, etc....) and others may be better at teaching blending (joining different phonemes - Kuh - ah - tuh = CAT) & sounding out words. You may find the TA moves groups as one group masters whatever hurdle and then goes to the next group (of lower ability) to help them master whatever is next to learn for them.

Our school also uses TAs and members of senior management group to support struggling students. They may work 1:1 with them - helping them read, do maths, etc... This is often done in quieter areas of the school - a small teaching room, the library or even quiet corners tucked away in the hallway.

The reality with schools is that it is a collective exercise. I think if you are aware of what notionally a child should be achieving in YR, Y1, etc... then you will be better able to judge whether your child is 'on track' or not; regardless of how communicative the school is or is not.

If you're really concerned - I'd suggest you talk more with the school - but to judge what should be taught & mastered by year in school, I'd recommend looking at Campaign for Real Education's Primary curriculum here: www.cre.org.uk/primary_contents.html. The new national curriculum is still in draft - but you can get an idea from Year 1 - Year 6 here: www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/nationalcurriculum2014/b00220600/consultation-national-curriculum-pos/draft-pos-subjects (remember Year R is still under Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum which also applies to under 5s and not the national curriculum).

HTH

Thanks PastSellByDate.I agree that ability grouping has some great benefits, as does small group teaching. I understand how TAs work alongside a teacher in a classroom or take a small group/individual from one class out to work on a particular task. However in this school the 5 or 6 groups were in different rooms, each with either a TA or teacher. The TAs were not obviously being directed by a teacher (though I am sure that they were directed by a teacher in some way). The TAs were delivering content in a way that I would normally expect to see a teacher to, and were more than "an extra pair of hands" as the whole structure of the delivery of the sessions appeared to be very reliant on them (and if cuts come, this may be a problem). So I am not clear on who delegates these sessions to the TA as the children in their groups came from 3 different classes and how the teachers monitor progress as their pupils are in 5 or 6 different groups led by a variety of staff.

We were shown around by one of the office staff so the teachers were doing what they normally would.

I am sorry to see you are still having difficulty with this concept, as it really is fairly common in many schools, though as you imply, if TAs are cut back more of it will fall to the teachers to deliver.

Perhaps TAs were known as 'Classroom Assistants' when you were a pupil yourself; I started as that, then became an LSA - Learning Support Assistant, then finally a TA. Back in the days of Kenneth Baker, I agree CAs were more just a 'pair of hands', and I used used mainly to support individual or small groups of Special Needs children; for instance, I had a 7 year old who didn't know her colours, and didn't know what a 'bridge' was. It would obviously waste a lot of a teacher's time to instill information like that if additional support was not available. (In my own school days, we had 42 in the class with one teacher, and 'Assistants' hadn't been invented!)

These days TAs are trained on an on-going basis to a high standard, and there are three different levels. Some may be aiming to become teachers, or may have previously been teachers; they may have raised their own family and now see TA as a way back into work, or may just not want any more of the endless meetings, agro, and 'moving of goalposts' that education unfortunately suffers from, more than most professions it would seem.

If you are happy about other aspects of the school, and this is your main misgiving, then maybe you need to query it further with the teachers/TAs concerned. It is also highly likely that during your child's school career, there will be other incidents or aspects that are not totally what you would want, but I'm afraid not much is perfect in this world. When our DS was several years into Grammar school, there was a maths master who we KNEW was not of a suitable standard; we met with the headmaster and the head of department, but they just 'closed ranks' and supported the teacher.

Feel free to 'PM' me if I can help further.

I will just have to ask the school. Being shown around by one of the admin staff was far from ideal as she really couldn't answer questions about teaching and learning, which is the most important part of a school for me. Though I am glad that the teachers and TAs were actually teaching rather than showing us round, so you can't really win.

I am probably struggling with this as I have been a teacher at secondary level and have done about 8 weeks of primary school experience too. I have worked with TAs, by having them supporting individual pupils and small groups, both in the classroom and taking them to other places to be able to focus the group. I found that you got a TA with your class if you had a statemented pupil, but otherwise they were rare as hens teeth (both in my secondary work and in primary work experience). So having "floating" TAs surprised me (in a good way) and I guess that the school has chosen to have perhaps two TAs rather than one more teacher for the age group.

What I struggle with is the collective responsibility and how they plan and communicate as quite a large team. If a class has a job share form teacher in addition to this, then there is a real risk of diffusion of responsibility and lack of "ownership".

I was hoping that a teacher or TA would pop up on this thread and say 'this is what we do at our school and it works like this...'.

I think that I am going to struggle with keeping out of DD's schooling. I'm doing fine with trusting her nursery to do the right thing, but it is easier to trust an "outstanding" nursery than a "satisfactory" school (I do know that OFSTED is not the be all and end all).

If you think you're going to have problems trusting the staff and the school I would suggest its not the school for you. and you find one that you will trust or else you are going to make yourself sick second guessing every decision the school make,.and very very quickly they will have you pegged as "that" parent! You say Ofsted isn't everything but say the outstanding nursery is easier to trust ?you have 8 weeks primary "experience "to be honest you know therefore nothing about primary school.

auntpetunia

I started this thread as I thought this would be a fairly common way of working and a TA or teacher would be quite likely to appear on the thread and explain how it works in practice for them. Something like, "we work like that, long term planning is done by the 3 teachers together and they each take two of the groups to do the short term plans for and work in pairs with a TA to deliver their two groups. Every 3 weeks we get together formally to feed back on how the pupils are doing to the class teacher of each pupil, as well as catching each other at odd moments." or however the set up works in practice. Most people are happy to give an overview of how they do their work, I would have my doubts about a setting that was unwilling to explain things like this and I am sure that, had a TA or teacher shown us round, they would have happily explained this.

I think trust may be the wrong word, but I will keep an eye on DD's progress, as many parents do. The more confident I am in the setting and the more I understand how it works, the less likely I will be to be "one of those parents". I trust them to keep her safe and do their best to educate her. But I would like to know how they work as a team in an arrangement that is unfamiliar to me. I really don't think that is unreasonable.

The thing about ofsted is that a recent grading of outstanding makes a setting likely to be at least "ofsted good", not a certainty, but more likely. I would be foolish to totally rely on an ofsted report when there are other sources of information such as current parents and the school itself, but I would be equally foolish to dismiss it. It is probably a red herring for this question as I would still like to know how it works if used in an outstanding school.

I don't "know nothing about primary school", I don't know a lot, but I do know a little - marginally more than nothing and probably marginally more than the parents of most preschoolers. I mentioned that I have spent time in primary schools to explain that I am familiar with how TAs and teachers work together in the classroom in what might be a more traditional set up of one teacher and one or more TAs. I am no expert and a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, that is why I asked a question.

But you are probably right, it is probably not the right school for us if I dare to ask a basic question about how they work. I'll just magic an outstanding school up on our doorstep and DD can go there.

Hi again -

That does rather change the way you might approach things, having been a secondary teacher, and with some primary experience. I had 2 years as TA in secondary, after 10 years as TA in the infants.

Regarding planning, would it not normally be the case that long term planning gets 'recycled' to some extent from one year to the next? Short term and weekly planning might depend more on how pupils were progressing (or not!) and therefore be open to change. However, as a TA I am happy that I did not get very involved in planning!

The progress children make in primary is probably much more gradual than in secondary, where new facts and concepts might come thick and fast, and older children have the ability to assimilate them. So YR, Y1 and Y2 will be learning skills and concepts quite alien to their life-experience up to that time. What always seems to be overlooked by MN families is that a great many children are raised in households that DO NOT VALUE books, conversation or learning, and the school has to magically somehow transform the child into a civilized literate and numerate being, DESPITE the parents and home life. One 7 yr old boy I worked with (in a voluntary family support capacity, the mother having learning difficulties) had to be cleaned up and washed every morning by someone in school, before he was in a acceptable state to go into class. I don't know if Michael Gove knows about children like that.

If you can possibly arrange it, I think you might be best off spending a day or two in the school, seeing what goes on. Does the school already know you are a secondary teacher? Because primary and secondary schools, children, teachers, methods and expectations are so different I think that might be the only way you will allay your misgivings.

Thanks Ferguson - that is a really interesting idea. I found it really useful going with DD to her settling in sessions at nursery. I was able to see the rhythms of the nursery day and some of the range of activities that they do. It was amazing to see how they gently encourage learning through play and give them access to things I wouldn't have expected until much older. It also means that when DD says that they didn't do any singing or read any books at nursery, I can be fairly confident that isn't true. Obviously you can't sit in on the first few sessions of YR as that would give a room of 30 children and 30 parents, but a day at some point would really give me an understanding of the flow of the day.

You are completely right that it is easy to overlook the skills learnt in infant school in favour of more obvious content and even in apparently affluent areas like ours there will always be children who need school to be much more to them that it should have to be. Michael Gove seems to live in a different country to the rest of us.

Our school works like this and the lead teacher (head of EY) has total control and it works extremely well. I would have been as unsure as you if I had not seen it working brilliantly myself. However this is in an outstanding school with highly experienced teachers and TAs. All formal assessment is done by the class teachers and planning is done by teachers but in collaboration not individually. There is not huge change from year to year so it does not have to all be replanned especially for phonics and numbers

They probably do Key stage planning. Therefore every teacher and TA is following the same plan and then following the 'bit' aimed at the group they have. So if they have the lower ability children the plan will state what they are doing and whoever teaches that group will follow that part of the plan, same for middles and highers. It will all be on the same plan.
Teachers will mark their own classes work and state if the LO (learning objective) is achieved or not. All children will have the same LO but it will be differentiated - eg if a LO is to solve problems using addition and subtraction, some will have simple problem and some will have 3,4 etc part problems. Each different skill will match a level in the national curriculum.

Thanks party245 and youarewinning that makes lots of sense and it is good to hear that it works well for your school party245. I really like the idea of having a variety of teachers/TAs teaching DD as sometimes a different explanation from a different person can get an idea you were struggling with to click with you. And, as Ferguson said, it can allow teachers and TAs to play to their strengths.

Do they switch around who takes the groups to give a reasonable mixture of TA and teacher time to each group? In secondary teaching there can be a tendency to focus TA time on weaker children, which is a bit of a double edge sword as the TAs may know them well or have greater skills at assisting pupils with SEN, as it is what they do all day, but it can mean that they don't get their fair share of teacher time and the specialist subject knowledge that teachers bring.

Also (if you have any experience of this) the school uses mixed age groups, with two year groups combined together and then split into these ability groups. I understand how they plan a two year rotation on topic work, but I am not quite sure how it would work with literacy and numeracy. Is it like a spiral curriculum where each child would hit the same topic each year, probably at the same time, but would be likely to be in a higher group in the second year, so would be accessing it at a higher level?

Yes yourarewinning that is what our school do.

Sorry candlelight2 no experience of doing this across year groups but I would trust our school to manage this. I guess the key thing it to try to find a school you feel you can trust otherwise these concerns will continue for all sorts of things.

What I can reassure you of is in our school each child has the same amount of one to one with the class teacher so they will be regularly assessed, listened to read individually and in a group and supported in small writing groups and the teacher would be very aware of progress and would I believe address it if the system was not working.

The questions I would want to know in your situation is if they are in these same groups all morning? At our school it is for short periods and different groups for phonics, numbers, reading, writing and hence different staff. This is interspersed with whole class teaching. I would struggle with the idea that certain children spent the whole morning being taught by the same TA every day and were grouped for all subjects together as one child might be good at numbers but weaker at writing for example.