Teaching Assistants (TAs) often play an essential role in supporting a growing cohort of pupils with SEND, including pupils with higher levels of need. This can bring enormous challenges, but the evidence also provides a hopeful message around potential impact.
The EEF’s Deployment of Teaching Assistants guidance report suggests three approaches for schools deploying their TAs in this way.
Enable access to high-quality teaching
Where TAs are working closely with pupils with SEND, it should be to supplement the teacher, not to replace them. That might mean:
- pre-teaching key vocabulary to some pupils with SEND, so they can participate more meaningfully in an upcoming lesson;
- working across the whole class, freeing up the teacher to provide additional support for pupils with SEND;
- supporting some pupils with SEND to be ready for learning and teaching positive learning behaviours, so they can access classroom teaching.
Including where pupils have a high level of SEND need, school leaders should be uncompromising in asking themselves how they ensure access to high-quality teaching for all pupils, delivered by teachers and supported where helpful by TAs.
Develop pupil independence
Independence looks different to different learners. For a TA who supports a pupil with their self-care, assists with their mobility needs or helps to keep the pupil safe around the school site, the idea of independence can be complex. We need to be careful not to remove support that leaves the pupil isolated, vulnerable or at risk
That said, when it comes to learning tasks, the principle of developing independence is likely to apply to all learners.
A metaphor of scaffolding is often used in relation to independence. No one wants scaffolding on the side of their house forever; no one wants their entire house covered in scaffolding if only one side of the house needs doing. Scaffolds should be temporary. Scaffolds should be targeted to the area of need of the pupil.
TAs working closely with pupils with SEND should therefore approach tasks aiming to lessen adult dependence over time.
That might involve modelling how to answer a question initially, but over time merely providing a clue to how the pupil might find their own way towards the answer – a process described in this updated scaffolding framework.
It might mean teaching a child the steps they must take to be ready for learning after breaktime, then turning this into a checklist for the pupil to manage on their own. Leaders should consider their own role in promoting effective scaffolding across their staff body
Make sure interventions have impact
When done well, TA-led interventions can have real impact. To be done well, they will need to be targeted to an area of need, be time-limited and support access to classroom teaching.
When done poorly, they can be unfocused, indefinite and ineffective, on top of denying the child access to classroom teaching. Many pupils with SEND will be particularly sensitive to the decisions school leaders make in relation to interventions, that either help or hinder their success.
Maximising the impact of TA-led interventions, and exploiting the positive evidence of this approach when used well, might mean leaders asking themselves a number of questions in relation to an intervention:
- Who is this intervention intended to support and what are their needs?
- What school-level or pupil-level data indicates that an intervention could meet this need?
- Can pupils’ needs be met in the classroom through high quality teaching? Can current practices be adapted to support these needs?
- How will the intervention allow pupils to better access what is being taught?
A model for success
The TA role is not only about supporting pupils with SEND, but where this is the reality in schools, evidence still points us towards the same set of principles.
Impact is more likely when schools have a clear vision for TA deployment that is shared by all staff.
Impact is more likely when staff across the school are trained and supported to turn this vision into effective day-to-day practice.
And impact is certainly more likely when TAs and those working alongside them are committed to increasing pupils’ access to good teaching, to developing independence and to leading effective interventions.
Next steps
Leaders might choose to ask themselves whether deployment decisions taken maximise pupils’ access to high quality teaching
Teachers and TAs might consider whether classroom practice supports pupils to be less reliance on additional adult support over time.
SENDCOs reviewing their intervention practices might reflect on how their current practice aligns with the core principles outlined above.