Any Secondary School 1 to 1 TAs

[Cat555]

Who could answer a couple of questions please?

I work 1 to 1 with a Year 6 pupil who has full-time support. There are no behavioural issues at all but they struggle with processing information. Although they are quite able, they struggle with listening, assimilating information and therefore producing writing. At the moment, they have me all the time to focus them and encourage them and basically keep them on track.

They are going to a mainstream secondary school and I'm aware that TA 1 to 1 support is very different there but not really sure how it works.

I'm assuming they won't have the same staff member in every lesson. Will there just be one TA for them or will they be shared with other SEN children and others who need support?

I would be really grateful for any Information as to how it would be for them. Warts and all please

I can answer this as a parent of a secondary child with 1:1.
My son has 18 hours of TA support via his EHCP. He has the same TA for all these hours who goes to the different lessons with him. The school prioritises the lessons in which the 1:1 is mist beneficial for him.
He has a different TA now to last year but still the same one for all his lessons.

IME this is a question that is very school specific.

I presume the EHCP comes with full time funding. In our school this is not the same person all the time. Usually the English LSA supports in English etc. However previous schools had 1:1s per student.

These are really helpful, thank you.

It does sound as if we'll have to wait to speak to the school, hopefully they will have just the one person which would certainly meet their needs the best.

Agree this is school specific. Some have support based on lesson specialisms. Eg the same LSA for English but a different one for maths. Others, like ours, try to partner students with the same LSA for the bulk of the week, but odd lessons will be with a different LSA.

I've only every worked with the latter, which can cause problems if the student then refuses to work with another LSA - as I am experiencing now where one of my mentees has just not built up a relationship with another LSA so just shuts down and refuses to work.

We are also assigned students to mentor so we should be best placed to advise other LSA's and staff about that student, even if we aren't in a particular lesson.

Hi @Cat555
In the last school I worked at, there was a rota of TA's and the yr7 students who needed extra support were given a TA for each lesson.
One of the boys was very challenging and told the teacher on his first day of secondary school to f@#$ off. He took to one TA really well but I still dont understand why he wasn't with her all the time. He worked really well with her and was openly hostile with the other TA's. I think all schools are different in how they manage their TA's.