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The world of the primary school
The world of the primary school

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2.4 Distinctive contributions

In Activity 3 you considered the various support roles of Jean Ionta, a pupil support assistant. Let us now consider in more detail the nature of the work that assistants do and the way they contribute to the totality of work in a classroom.

Job descriptions aim to capture the work that teaching assistants should do. The work may be categorised in terms of administrative duties, classroom resource preparation, and work with children. An interesting framework for thinking about roles, duties and the focus of support work was provided by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE, 2000a, para. 2.5), which suggested four levels of support for:

  • pupils
  • the teacher
  • the school
  • the curriculum.

You will consider the usefulness of this framework in the next activity.

Activity 4 Roles and responsibilities

Timing: Allow about 1 hour

Now read, ‘Ten titles and roles’ by Roger Hancock and Jennifer Colloby (2013) [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . It contains thumbnail sketches of the roles and responsibilities of ten learning support staff members.

Select one sketch that particularly interests you, and consider the extent to which the title and role described relate to the DfEE’s four-part framework. How far does the role you have focused on compare to your own or, if you do not currently work in learning support, your perception of the work of a teaching assistant? Make some notes in the box below.

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Discussion

A factor that we have not yet mentioned but that impacts on the ways in which teaching assistants are deployed is their flexibility as a workforce. Many are employed on a part-time basis, often with short-term contracts. One classroom assistant told us, ‘My job description changes every term!’ Teaching assistants may be moved around in a school so that they can work with individuals and groups of children as and when the need arises. As you may know, in England the national literacy and numeracy strategies introduced a large number of ‘catch-up’ and ‘booster’ programmes for children who were not meeting expectations. Teaching assistants have been very much involved in these programmes, which require considerable flexibility on their part as they work with children across year groups.