Continuing Professional Development for Teaching Assistants
Support staff in schools make a strong contribution to pupils' learning and achievement. The National Agreement between government, employers and school workforce unions has created the conditions in which teachers and support staff can work together even more effectively in professional teams.
Teachers' professional training, knowledge and experience prepare them to take overall responsibility for pupils' learning. However there are times when they will want to draw upon support from a wide range of colleagues including teaching assistants. The work of the teaching assistants compliments that of teachers and the roles are not interchangeable.
The provision of continuing professional development for teaching assistants will enable them to make a greater contribution to improving standards and enhance the range of support available to teachers and schools. It can help ensure that teaching assistants are able to work effectively, to develop as individuals and to develop schools as communities of learning.
There are a range of activities that come within the remit of professional development including training and support. One element of continuing professional development is a framework of accredited training. Such a framework will help to provide an assurance to teaching assistants, teachers, employers and parents about the quality of the contribution to pupils' learning that teaching assistants can be expected to make.
Teaching assistants work in a range of different settings and have a variety of roles. In recent years there has been an increase of the numbers of support staff working in schools as well as the diversity of roles. However all teaching assistants contribute to the learning activities in the areas where they working when they work as part of the professional team with teachers.
The framework for training is intended to provide a flexible training route that can meet the need of all teaching assistants. A range of accreditation routes are recognised including NVQ, OCN and CACHE.
