Teaching assistants can often be overlooked in discussions about education policy and staff development - yet they are a vital part of school life and offer infinite value to the sector.
TAs give support to teachers and pupils, often acting as a bridge between the two, helping to create a positive and inclusive classroom atmosphere.
Given this, at the University of Chichester Academy Trust we believe it is vital that they have access to high-quality professional development. After all, teachers are well-trained and we would never question the importance of developing teachers, so why should TAs be different?
CPD for teaching assistants
Of course, being such vital members of staff means that TAs aren’t always easily released for professional development.
However, our trust decided to take advantage of an Inset day and get all the TAs from across our 17 academies together in one place - where no one was knocking on the door and asking them for something! We did this so we could focus on them and hear their views.
More than 260 TAs came to the University of Chichester campus in Bognor Regis for a session focused on two areas: oracy in the classroom, which we are having a whole-trust push on and is threaded through all of our CPD for the year; and practical ways to enhance their role.
Building skills
For the first aspect of the day, we held talks and seminars about scaffolding techniques, such as the scaffolding triangle, strategies for dialogic talk, Alexander’s repertoire of pupil talk and how to encourage more independent thinking and communication in pupils.
This included looking at the Mercer framework and how to structure conversations and support students’ communication skills.
Discussion groups then gave the TAs the opportunity to talk with colleagues and hear about different approaches, giving them valuable insight into how oracy can be applied in various settings.
We also gave them handouts to take away, with examples of questions, language prompts and activities, like games to support discussion to help them implement oracy strategies back in the classroom.
It was a fantastic day and the TAs told us they appreciated the time and space to think, away from the fast pace of everyday life in school. They enjoyed the dialogue and networking with their peers because this helped them to think more dynamically and pick up ideas from each others’ schools.
Some feedback we picked up from a post-event survey included:
Learning as a trust
The second component of the day was the chance for us, as a trust, to understand more about what TAs want in terms of professional development.
We asked the TAs to fill out a survey so that we could find out about their career progression interests, their prior training and qualifications (both academic and other), and their appraisal targets and strengths.
We also used some direct questioning to focus some of their answers on areas we especially want to improve on, such as target setting, which can often be generic rather than directly linked to pupils’ learning.
The information gathered from this survey allowed us to identify the development needs of our TAs and then to support them, as individuals, with career development.
We have analysed the results and made them available to leaders within the trust, and we have started working with our HR department on streamlining a more consistent approach across the trust for our appraisal process.
For those TAs who expressed an interest in training to become a teacher, we also put on a webinar so they could find out more about pathways into the profession.
All in all, we were very pleased with the success of the day and we hope to put on further TA development days this academic year.
We recognise the complexity of what TAs do - day in, day out - and we are committed to offering them expert help to invest in their professional skills set.
Cate Worrall is director of academy improvement and development at the University of Chichester Academy Trust
For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter
