HLTA teaching classes

[3jellybeans]

How often is it acceptable for HLTAs to teach classes in primary? Are they similar to a teacher? My child is in year 3 and comes home most days saying that they have been taught by their TA all day and this seems to be at least 3 days a week? Plus TA’s teaching P.E lessons too on other days. Is this the norm these days?

A HLTA is trained to plan and teach classes.
In our school our HLTA prepares and teaches R.E across the majority of classes so that teachers can have their PPA. Sometimes it depends if the teacher is an NQT- they will have more PPA time or SLT in our school are out of their classes majority of the time so have a HLTA teaching or supply.

Some schools are over-using HLTAs, I think. It's quite normal for them to do things like covering PPA time, or teaching a particular subject, but less appropriate for them to be teaching the same class for a substantial proportion of the time. Some are very good, and perhaps the concern with those is not that their teaching isn't good enough, but that they are being paid much less than they deserve.

However there may be a reasonable explanation. At the moment, many schools are trying to avoid using supply teachers, who may have been in several other schools. So they may well be asking HLTAs/TAs to step up - perhaps especially if the teacher is just self-isolating and still able to set the work and provide resources. Some HLTAs/TAs are actually qualified teachers who don't want the hassle of being a full-time teacher, so they might actually be qualified. (The question there is whether the school is paying them teacher rates for this work, but that's their problem.)

In DC's school the main class teacher will plan the lesson in general and be the one planning how to cover the syllabus over the year etc but when the children separate into groups one of the groups will often be taken by the HLTA. In our case the HLTA seems completely capable of covering the class and I'm more than happy with her teaching DC.