school over funded.

[user1497480444]

Surely I can't be the only one that feels this.

I am a TA. I am paid 15k a year to support children who refuse to accept my support, don't need my support, or are too academically limited to make use of my support.

There are 25 of us in my school

nearly half a million pound s year spent on nothing.

If children were made to behave, if children were in lessons leading towards appropriate qualification for their abilities, if children were encourages to work independently etc etc they would learn far more anyway, and all that could be done WITHOUT us.

I've just fitted jobs around my family, really. I loved being a TA in my first two positions. It is only this one that has been so awful. Behaviour in many schools is terrible, but if the staff look after each other and get support, it is'nt so bad to live with. And you end up fond of a certain number of the kids, what ever.

But I'm going back into teaching now, because, so many thousands of ex teachers are competing for TA jobs, and so many teaching posts are vacant. Once I had finally decided to leave where I'm at now, it was much easier to get a teaching job than another TA job. Its partly pastoral, anyway,which I've had a lot of experience with, its a small teaching timetable.

I put these on a different thread, but relevant here:

www.tes.com/news/tes-magazine/tes-magazine/myth-inclusion

He says overreliance on TAs “fosters dependency and learned helplessness” and “the more TA support pupils with SEND receive, the less well they perform academically”

or this

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/i-have-been-asked-report-teachers-who-fail-control-behaviour-they

Right, this is a poster who pops up from time to time and who has some very bizarre ideas about schools' legal obligations to children with SEN. The claim that other people agreeing with her makes it legal for maintained schools to have quotas for children with DS is just one example.

confirmed by others on the thread, if you had read it

We've been over this- it was a school that had a specialist unit with a certain number of places. There is no quota in most schools. Secondaries get what they're given from feeders schools. Our next cohort of Yr 7 only has 5 identified students. This year there was 25. Swings and roundabouts.

I know what you mean about babysitting and practically doing the work for them. It's the system.

Not in every school, it's not. We are not allowed to do the work for them. And if it's properly differentiated, we shouldn't need to. Examples on a small whiteboard, helping a child to use whatever practical aids they need ( dictionaries etc), helping them choose correct word order etc, but the work in their books is their own. Pointless to do otherwise as assessments would soon show whether a child has made progress or not. The problem is that some schools don't manage their tas well and those children suffer as a result.

You are totally right while which is why TAs should have at least some training and all new teachers should be trained to use TAs. It's not over funding that's the problem but poor resource management by individual schools.

I totally agree with OP that the system is failing lots of children. Lots of parents have no idea what goes on in lessons. I spent a few years at school as TA and a group tutor and left as I was disillusioned with the system. The main problem is behaviour. If the management doesn't support the teachers there are no consequences for bad behaviour. I would call parents and complain about bad behaviour and they did nothing to address it. Very often they didn't pick up the phone.
In one of the school I had to do extra maths GCSE tuition to C/D border line girls. They didn't care at all if they had C or D or E. Teaching them was like pulling teeth. The school paid for November exams, those who didn't get a C sat March exam, those who didn't get a C sat June exam. What a waste of money! If their parents had to pay for resits they might have paid more attention.
What could a TA do if some kids just don't want to be there? They might be good at something practical, but have to spend endless hours to simplify expression for Foundation maths GCSE that they can never understand.