Ofsted's praise for TAs

Ofsted has given a loud cheer for the work of teaching assistants and other support staff in school.
Ofsted's report on the wider school workforce says support staff are having a growing impact on children's educational achievement and well-being because of the special qualities and skills they bring into schools.
Teaching assistants and other support staff are especially successful at engaging children who are disaffected, including children who bully or have been bullied, and motivating them to learn, say the school inspectors.
In the best schools, senior managers recognise the special knowledge and skills support staff bring to their work because of their wide range of backgrounds and experiences.
TAs are most effective at improving attitudes to learning in schools where policies for managing behaviour set high expectations of pupils and are implemented consistently by all school staff.
Support staff are also having a big impact in many schools because of their ability to build strong links with parents and the local community. Ofsted says in nearly all the schools they visited TAs were improving communication with parents and carers by “giving timely, detailed information about children's progress, attendance, behaviour and well-being.” They were also helping parents develop the skills to support their children's education.
In more than half the schools inspected, parents who didn't want to talk to teachers because they had negative experiences of school themselves, or lacked confidence, were happy to talk to teaching assistants who may have been parents at the school themselves, or may have come back to education
Parents whose first language was not English also were more willing to talk to a support staff member who could speak their first language.
The wider school workforce is having a greater impact than in its previous surveys, Ofsted said. Communication between teachers and teaching assistants was key to success because TAs have the biggest impact when they understand their role and know exactly what they need to do to help pupils make progress.
But schools needed to do more to manage and develop their support staff, including making more use of the Training and Development Agency for Schools' national occupational standards and career development framework.
The employment, training and development of the wider school workforce

"Get the dads involved"

The government wants schools to do more to support fathers.
Children's minister Beverley Hughes wants fathers to be more involved with their children's health and education, and for people working with children to think about how they can help them get involved.
The government points to evidence that children who grow up with strong father figures are less likely to get into crime, take drugs, have mental health problems or experience difficulties forming relationships.
Hughes called for a campaign to get the message across “that parental responsibilities should be shared equally among parents”.

More children to get free travel

All primary school children in Wales will be eligible for free bus travel to school from September if they live more than two miles away from the nearest suitable school. The threshold now is three miles, and this will remain for secondary school students.
Local authorities will also be obliged to help children access Welsh medium education under the new law passed by the Welsh Assembly.

Work keeps parents from school

Two out of three parents would like to get more involved in their children's school life but many cannot because of their work.
New research shows that only about half of parents feel very involved, but some are more likely to be involved than others. Parents of young children, Black parents, and parents of children with special educational needs are more likely than average to be involved.
The research confirms that parents' involvement in children's education from an early age has a big impact on children's achievement right into adulthood.
Family learning brings benefits to parents and children, including improvements in reading, writing and numeracy.and it gives children more confidence in helping their child at home.
The Impact of Parental Involvement on Children's Education DCSF 2008

New schools for old

More than 1500 primary schools have been given the go ahead to rebuild or refurbish their premises.
Building plans worth £3.5 billion have been approved by the government – the first stage in a programme to update half of all primary schools within 15 years. 700 schools have been rebuild or completely refurbished since 1997, the government claims.
Education secretary Ed Balls said “A decade ago many classroom facilities were in an appalling condition….Today’s announcement means we can build state of the art primary schools at the heart of our communities – so every child and family as access to year-round extended childcare, parenting support, after school activities and access to ICT, sports and arts facilities.
41 local authorities have had their Primary Capital Funding applications agreed for the next two years, and another 92 will be told how much money they will get next year. 15 have been told to resubmit their plans.

TAs teach Turkish lessons

Bilingual teaching assistants are teaching classes in their native language in London primary schools.
Schools in the north London borough of Enfield are being encouraged to find out what languages are spoken by all their teaching staff – not just the qualified teachers – when they choose which foreign language to teach.
The borough wants more schools to teach Turkish and Greek to children instead of choosing the usual western European languages of French, Spanish and German.
One Turkish born teaching assistant, Zuleyha Kahveci, is teaching two Turkish lessons a week for year five pupils at Churchfield Primary School in Enfield according to a report in the Guardian newspaper.
The school has a large number of Turkish children, and many teachers are also interested in learning Turkish so they communicate more easily with parents.
Enfield’s language advisor Bernardette Clinton said the council was hoping that teaching community languages would increase understanding in the local community.

"One child in ten is abused"

One child in ten in the UK is experiencing physical, sexual or emotional abuse or is neglected, say experts.
Research published in the Lancet medical journal says that most maltreated children are never referred to social services. People who have contact with children such as teachers and teaching assistants lack awareness of the signs of maltreatment, and the procedures for reporting any concerns to child protection agencies. Many professionals also have little confidence that telling social workers will help children or fear their lives will be made even worse if they are taken into care, say the researchers.
Using a range of different studies, the Lancet claims that every year between four and 16 per cent of children are physically abused, and one in ten is neglected or emotionally abused.
During children, up to one in ten girls and one in twenty boys experience penetrative sexual abuse. Up to three times as many are sexually abused in non-penetrative ways.
The researchers say that neglect is at least as damaging as physical or sexual abuse in the long term, but has received least attention.
Lancet editor Richard Horton said the findings showed that child maltreatment was very complex. Trying to blame individual professionals or think there was a simple solution was to “completely misrepresent the extent and depth of the problem”, he said.

Curriculum shake-up recommendations

Primary schools should have more flexibility for project work and other cross-curricular teaching says education expert Sir Jim Rose.
Sir Jim has recommended that the national curriculum should be based on six areas of learning, instead of the current range of individual curriculum subjects.
The aim is to give schools more flexibility for project-based cross-curricular learning, though he also says essential that subject-teaching must not disappear and can be encompassed within the six areas.
Sir Jim rules out changing the school start date from the September after the child’s fourth birthday. But parents could be allowed to send their child to school only part time to begin with.
Sir Jim was asked by the government to review the primary curriculum, but was told not to consider SATS in his report. He has commented that every school talked about testing, and it should be reviewed separately. Teachers’ leaders have said his proposals cannot work unless SATS are scrapped.
In this interim report, the review also suggests that the primary curriculum might be better divided into three two-year phases instead of the current two key stages.

The six areas of learning proposed by Sir Jim Rose
Understanding English, communication and languages
Mathematical understanding
Scientific and technological understanding
Human, social and environmental understanding
Understanding physical health and well-being
Understanding the arts and design

Free meals for all

All primary school children in two local authorities are to get free school meals in a government experiment to see what effect it has on behaviour and obesity.

The pilot scheme will last two years, and two local authorities in deprived areas will be chosen. In a third authority the eligibility rules for free meals will be changed.

Hull council introduced free meals for all primary children, but Labour lost power in the local elections and the Liberal Democrats scrapped the scheme.

Under the present rules, about 16% of primary children are entitled to free school meals but child welfare charities say many don't take them because of the stigma attached, and fear of bullying.

Chair appointed to new support staff pay body

The government has appointed an independent chair to set up the new body which will oversee school support staff pay and conditions.

The Schools Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB)will be underpinned by new legislation. The new law will also compel schools to abide by the national workforce agreement, designed to free up teachers from other responsibilities.

Under the agreement, teachers were supposed to have 10% of their time for Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA), and not to have to cover for absent colleagues for more than 38 hours a year. But the government says some teachers are still being expected to cover for absent colleagues during their own PPA time.

The SSNB would give a bigger voice to more than 300,000 school support staff, and will establish a separate negotiating formum for support staff pay and conditions "where the specific role they play is recognised and reflected fairly and openly accross all schools", said a government statement.

"The national framework will facilitate a much greater degree of clarity and consistency in the terms and conditions of support staff nationwide than is possible under the current arrangements, while still allowing employers sufficient flexibility to meet their local needs."

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said, "This is a very important development. Professional and support staff in schools deserve fair pay and the hard work starts now to make sure the new negotiating body can deliver this."

The chair of the new body is Philip Ashmore, currently a member the NHS Pay Review Body, responsible for making pay recommendations for 1.2 million NHS staff.

Unpaid overtime by TAs must stop, schools told

Schools have been told by an official committee to change the way they employ teaching assistants.

The Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group (WAMG) – made up of government, employers’ and union representatives – has issued new guidelines in response to worries about the way support staff are being used in some schools.

TAs are being required to take on responsibilities they are not appropriately trained or skilled for in some schools, it says. In primary schools, support staff who have not been trained to HLTA level (including in behaviour management) should not be used to cover planned or unplanned teacher absences even in the short term, says the guidance.

They are also being expected to do unpaid “overtime” which is unacceptable says the WAMG. If a TA’s working arrangements do not fully cover the work required of the post there should be “a proper discussion” to resolve the issue. This could include paying overtime, extended their contractual hours and pay, or getting another member of staff to do the extra work, says the guidance.

The new guidance also says that too many HLTAs are being hired on “split” contracts – in which they are paid as HLTAs for some of their time and at a lower rate as basic teaching assistants for the rest.

Schools are taking too a narrow view of the HLTA role – seeing it only in connection with teachers’ PPA time. This means the skills of teaching assistants with HLTA status are not being fully used to raise standards, as intended.

Casual arrangements in which TAs who have achieved HLTA status are given extra pay only for the hours they work with whole classes “are not in line with the aims of workforce reform and the principles of the National Agreement”, says the guidance.

“The National Agreement explicitly recognises that support staff should receive remuneration that reflects their level of training, skills and responsibilities – and this is particularly important as higher level roles develop.”

The guidance also says schools should review the use of term-time only contracts. These now cover the majority of permanent support staff, but they are sometimes issued “inconsistently, without transparency, and can be applied disproportionately to part-time staff.” The new national negotiating body for support staff in England, due to start work this year, will be looking at the issue of term time only contracts.

The Appropriate Deployment of Support Staff in Schools. Department for Children, Schools and Families July 2008. www.dcsf.gov.uk

Multi-ethnic schools "better for children"

Children in multi-ethnic schools have higher self esteem and experience less bullying than children in schools where everyone or nearly everyone is from the same ethnic group, say researchers.

A study by Sussex and Kent university researchers led by Professor Rupert Brown found that minority ethnic children did better in schools with children from different ethnic backgrounds, and children from the ethnic majority had more friendships with children from other ethnic groups and were less prejudiced.

The results cast doubt on policies which lead to a reduction in school diversity, such as promoting single faith schools.

Call for child mental health training

People working with children need better training in child mental health, says the children’s mental health charity Young Minds.

All professions working with children should be trained so they have a the expertise to pick up problems as they arise, says the charity. “It’s key that young people have someone they can turn to who they can trust and knows how to support them”, said Young Minds’ Julia Mason.

“We are not calling for everyone to become a therapist but simply to understand the role they can play in spotting mental health problems at an early stage. Training for professionals who provide support in the first years of a child’s life is particularly important.”

SATS firm sacked

The private company responsible for marking this year’s SATS papers has been sacked.

The American company ETS was stripped of its contract by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which appointed them in the first place. The announcement came after thousands of complaints from schools about delayed results and inadequate marking.

Results were so late that by the end of July some children still hadn’t received their marks. Some heads said SATS papers had been returned unmarked, with pupils marked as absent.

Heads reported problems with the system from early on. At one point, according to the BBC, ETS had 10,000 unopened emails from schools.

Striking TAs "determined"

Just before the summer holidays is not a good time to lose two days pay. But thousands of teaching assistants have decided to do it anyway by taking part in the local government pay strike.
On the second day of the strike, hundreds of schools have been forced to close again because of the industrial action by support staff.
Pictured here are TAs on the picket line at Jubilee School in the London Borough of Hackney. Twenty eight teaching assistants at the school have joined the strike, closing the school along with eleven others in the borough, according to Unison.
Unison says, "Many UNISON members are low-paid, part-time women workers, struggling to pay the bills - losing two days pay for strike action is not something we do lightly. We are striking because the employers won't even consider talking to us about a better offer.
"We know that the services we provide are essential to our community, and that shutting them down for two days will cause disruption and we're genuinely sorry if you are inconvenienced. We just can't afford another pay cut.
And unless we get a fair settlement on pay, local communities will suffer too. Services will simply get worse as councils continue to lose committed staff and struggle to find new employees prepared to work for such low pay."

TA strike set to close one school in three

Up to a third of primary schools are expected to close today and tomorrow as teaching assistants take strike action over pay.
Altogether 600,000 local government workers will join the strike over a bel0w-inflation pay offer.
Most teaching assistants are paid for term time only, on an hourly rate. The average full time TA gets the equivalent of about £58 a day for each day they work.
Local government employers have offered a 2.45% increase, claiming they can't afford more.
But unions say they have £11 billion in reserve which they could use to fund a fairer increase.
Schools too have reserves of about £6 billion which the unions say could be used to improve pay for their support staff.

Unions plead for new pay talks

Unions have made a last minute appeal to local government employers to re-open pay talks and head off next week’s strike.

Teaching assistants are among 600,000 employees set to take industrial action on July 16^th and 17^th in protest at a below-inflation pay offer.

Giant billboards were delivered to the Local Government Association (LGA) saying “2.45% - it’s a shame”.

Heather Wakefield, the union’s head of local government, said Ms Wakefield added: "Our members have families and the employers must realise that they cannot ride out another winter of choosing between basics such as putting food on their tables or paying their energy bills."

LGA chief Simon Milton told local government leaders earlier this month, “I am sure we all regret that our unions have decided to take industrial action. But as there is no additional government grant, we cannot offer more than we already have as to do so would mean cuts in services or unacceptable council tax rises. I therefore call on the unions to end their dispute swiftly.”

Big leap in primary school language teaching

More than four out five primary schools are now teaching children a foreign language.
A study by the National Foundation for Educational Research found that the overwhelming majority were teaching French, Spanish or German. But a few are offering Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Urdu.
The government wants all primary school children to have a chance to learn another language by 2010.
Language Learning Provision at Key Stage 2

Minister blames teachers for children's SATS stress

Schools minister Ed Balls has accused primary schools of causing children unnecessary stress over SATS.

In an interview with the New Statesman magazine he said some teachers worry children by giving them advance warning of exams.

“It is totally the wrong way of doing things. No seven year old should ever know they are doing SATS.”

Headteachers, who have repeatedly called for SATS to be scrapped, said Balls was guilty of hypocrisy.

Action called for to regulate use of teaching assistants

Tighter regulation is needed to stop schools asking teaching assistants to take on too many teaching responsibilities, according to Unison.

Speaking at the union’s annual conference last week, Unison national secretary Christina McAnea said TAs were often being asked to take whole classes.

Many have not received the right training or support for the duties they are being asked to perform, and they are also not paid for them.

“We are pushing the government and the employers to provide much tighter regulations and for these to be more closely monitored,” said McAnea.

Unison members vote to strike

Schools could close as teaching assistants in England, Wales and Northern Ireland take strike action over pay

Public sector union Unison – which represents 200,000 school support staff across the UK – has called a two day strike of its local government members - including TAs - on July 16^th and 17^th.

According to the union, 55% of its local government members voted in a ballot for strike action over the government’s 2.45% pay offer.

Almost 250,000 of those balloted earn less than £6.50 an hour, and three quarters of those are women, says the union.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said they were “fed up and angry that they are expected to accept pay cut after pay cut, while bread and butter prices go through the roof.

“Most of them are low paid workers who are hit hardest by food and fuel price hikes, and they see the unfairness of boardroom bonanzas.”

In Scotland Unison members are to be balloted for industrial action after rejecting a three year offer worth 2.5% a year.

Deaf pupils "left behind"

Deaf children are needlessly falling behind their hearing peers at school, says a children’s charity.

The National Deaf Children’s Society says the education system is failing deaf children and is calling on the government to make sure local authorities provide parents and schools with the resources they need to support deaf children.

Currently there is an attainment gap between deaf and hearing children, with deaf children less likely to achieve the benchmark of five GCSEs at grades A to C.

NDCS chief executive Susan Daniels said, “Deafness is not a learning disability. There is absolutely no reason why deaf children without additional needs should not be achieving on a par with their hearing peers.

A comprehensive strategy is needed to meet the needs of deaf children says NDCS, and governments should give leadership, set standards and provide funding to make sure no deaf child is left behind.