Teaching assistants are the backbone of a crumbling education system

I am saddened but unsurprised by your report on the (mis)use of teaching assistants in schools (Teaching assistants routinely cover lessons in England and Wales, survey finds, 26 April). Back in 2005, I was a special needs teacher employed centrally by the local education authority, and worked in mainstream primary schools on a one-to-one basis with children with statements of special educational need. Around this time, funding for this service was being run down and transferred to individual schools. On two occasions, I was told by a headteacher that they would no longer be using our service – with all its resources and expertise – and would I please explain to a teaching assistant what I did.

The first time, to my shame, I complied. The second time I refused. Thirty-five years as a primary teacher – half of that time in special needs, with all the in-service training that accompanied the role – was not going to be reduced to a half-hour chat with an untrained assistant who was to take over my job, at a much reduced salary. What an insult to all concerned.
Jenny Hartland
York

• Taking support away from children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) is a very real problem because they are often the children who teaching assistants are employed to support in the first place.

To say a class may be taught by an unqualified teaching assistant, however, is a little misleading, as a higher-level teaching assistant has a qualification enabling them to take a class in the absence of a teacher. This level carries a higher salary, though nowhere near that paid to a teacher. Also, a qualified teacher whose specialism is music, for example, may be expected to cover the absence of a science teacher and may rely heavily on the teaching assistant who is regularly present in the science class.

It has long been the case that teaching assistants have been looked down on in schools, but are expected to carry out duties above their pay grade. They often carry responsibility for the medical care of Send children, requiring extra training, with no extra remuneration.

The number of Send children is rising, so the number of teaching assistants has to increase to care for them. It is unacceptable for these children to have their support reduced or removed in order for a teaching assistant to cover an absent teacher. Teaching assistants are the backbone of a failing education system that would crumble without them.
Susan Buckley
Edlington, Lincolnshire

• The unwanted and unwarranted pressures of Ofsted inspections and the challenges of a changing curriculum on teachers have been well documented. But they are not recent problems.

While reading the Thomas Hardy short story A Mere Interlude this week, I came across a historical parallel to the current plight of teachers from the late 19th century. In the story, the young schoolmistress, Baptista Trewthen, is expressing her dislike of her profession, relating to school inspections and a changing curriculum, to her landlady. I quote: “Yet I would even put up with them if it was not for the inspector. For three months before his visit I didn’t sleep soundly. And the Committee of Council are always changing the Code, so that you don’t know what to teach, and what to leave untaught.”

It seems that politicians have always interfered and contributed to making teaching a demanding profession. Will they never learn?
Dr Jeff Penfold
Wantage, Oxfordshire

• Recently, a highly qualified teacher I know attended an interview in an academy. Despite the fact that she is an expert in her subject, and has spoken at national conferences, she was not given the job and was told that her experience made her too expensive. The post went to an early-career teacher who is inexperienced and cheap, and therefore more likely to go off sick due to stress, potentially leading to low-paid teaching assistants covering lessons. It is common knowledge that management-heavy academies are looking for savings so appoint cheap, and therefore potentially vulnerable, teachers.
Toby Wood
Peterborough

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