Read the full guidance report
Recommendations poster
Overview
What this guidance report covers
This guidance is designed to help you make decisions about how to deploy your teaching assistants.
Its five recommendations are drawn from the evidence base on teaching assistant (TA) deployment practices and how these can lead to improved outcomes.
Teaching assistants play a vital role in schools and colleges. This guidance celebrates their contributions while acknowledging the complexities of maximizing their impact. It highlights research on effective teaching assistant deployment, high-quality teaching, and inclusive learning environments, offering school and college leaders insights into overcoming barriers and making leadership decisions that unlock the full potential of this workforce.
Additional resources
Guidance report
Deployment of Teaching Assistants guidance report
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Deployment of Teaching Assistants summary of recommendations
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Effective teacher - teaching assistant partnerships
A starting point for discussions between a teacher and TA to inform ongoing communication and decision-making to support the learning of all pupils.
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Scaffolding framework
A framework to help TAs scaffold pupils' independent learning through: correcting, modelling, clueing, prompting and self-scaffolding.
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Scaffolding framework for teaching assistant - pupil interactions
A framework to demonstrate how visual, verbal and written scaffolds can be used to gradually increase pupils' independence over time.
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Implementing changes to TA deployment
Example implementation plan
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Implementing changes to TA deployment - editable template
Editable implementation plan template