A can of worms

The Government is pushing ahead with its plans to develop an enhanced role for classroom assistants. After ministers insisting for months that the rise in numbers of teaching assistants (TAs) was unrelated to teacher shortages and denying that they were a cheap option to paper over recruitment difficulties, recent statements have suggested that the Government does now view TA employment as going some way to alleviating the problem.

But many teachers view the plans to enhance the TAs' role as an attack on their professional status. Professor Diane Montgomery of Middlesex University says it will result in poor teaching and a return to 19th century education. The Open University has carried out a two-year study into primary school classroom support staff and has also expressed concerns about the Government's proposals.

Distribution

The first concern is about staff distribution and deployment. Nursery nurse employment has developed in a fairly tight regulatory framework that is tied more closely to the educational needs of the under-fives, bringing some coherence to how and where they are employed. Not so teaching assistants, whose numbers have soared in recent years.

Between 1995 and 2000, the number of primary school classroom assistants increased by 48 per cent, while the number of primary teachers increased by 1 per cent.

This rise is being driven by the now-widespread belief that they are of value to schools. Yet their employment has not been managed by Government and is only loosely controlled by local education authorities.

It is the deregulation of school budgets, and the greater autonomy over spending, that has enabled schools to employ support staff. As a market-driven phenomenon, this has created an incoherent pattern of support.

Deployment of TAs varies, though they are most likely to work with pupils with statements of special educational needs, pupils aged under five and minority ethnic pupils. Distribution varies too, reflecting local factors and values rather than educational need, and it does not correlate with the size of a school, governance and level of social deprivation.

Importantly, the OU study could find no evidence to support claims that TA support improves pupils' educational performance, even though it does substantially alleviate pressures on teachers.

These findings raise questions about the rationale and cost of employing support staff. Crucially, they also raise questions about how the Government can ensure a fair distribution of support staff based upon educational need if they press ahead with their plans. Indeed, how can the Government identify an expanded role for TAs without addressing the question of their distribution? And if the Government does expand the role, then wider issues of accountability, training and management will have to be addressed at the same time.

Roles and pay

Defining the new roles will be all the more challenging, given the extent to which the responsibilities of support staff have grown in recent years. The Government's announcement of its plans was only a belated acknowledgement of that change.

Nursery nurses have a much clearer sense of their roles than TAs working with teachers because of the tighter organisational framework in which they are employed. And these working relationships are further cemented through specialised nursery nurse training and distinctive terms and conditions of service. TA roles are far more varied.

The Open University research, however, has shown that both groups are now undertaking many of the tasks traditionally associated with the role of the teacher, despite their often poor terms and conditions and no extra remuneration for their additional work. The research also confirms that unqualified assistants and trained nursery nurses are undertaking a substantial, and often unsupervised, teaching commitment - a practice that raises questions about potential exploitation and legality.

An expanded role for support staff can only come at extra cost, because the extent to which TAs are involved in teaching is now public knowledge, and no longer shrouded in mystery by the Government's and employers' indifference.

Most TAs are paid between 5 and 6 per hour, but nursery nurses cost considerably more. If there is any change in responsibilities attached to an expanded role for TAs, then problems will emerge about the pay differential, because of the training needed to be a nursery nurse and because of their accountability. Headteachers are already worried about this.

There is, therefore, an urgent need for a debate about TAs' and teachers' roles, workload and pay, because the two have become inextricably linked. It no longer makes any sense to discuss teachers' workload and pay without reference to TAs and nursery nurses.

The question of staff contracts will also need to be addressed. Education secretary Estelle Morris reaffirmed that LEAs and schools have responsibility for support staff contracts, but this will pose serious problems for local authorities if the Government then statutorily changes the roles and responsibilities of support staff.

Accountability

Alllied to the questions over roles and pay comes the question of accountability. The ways in which support staff employment has developed have given it little official status, allowing career needs, appraisal and staff development to be largely ignored.

In many schools, assistants are recruited from among parent volunteer helpers. The situation is very different for nursery nurses who are generally recruited through public advertisements because of the specialist skills needed. Nursery nurses are also more accountable for their work than TAs - they are, for example, subject to Ofsted inspection, whereas TAs are not.

Affordability

Government investment in the use of teaching assistants will have to be substantial if their numbers are increased and their role expanded.There are signs that current budgets are already insufficient to guarantee high-quality staff in the classroom. Cash-starved schools are being encouraged by the blurring of the boundaries between teachers and support staff to recruit TAs instead of nursery nurses because they are cheaper.

There is also considerable evidence in the OU research to show that nursery nurses' contracts are being revised unilaterally by employers in response to concerns about the costs of nursery education. Most assistants were working part-time, and although half of assistants were on permanent contracts, many found their working lives vulnerable to budget fluctuations and had terms and conditions of service changed at very short notice, often without discussion, by employers.

Despite an injection of Government money to boost TA numbers by 20,000, only just over half of the headteachers in the study reported that they had increased the number of assistants employed. One in five reported reducing staff numbers because of budgetary pressures, with nursery nurses appearing more vulnerable to job cuts.

Training

The quality and availability of support staff training will likewise have to come under scrutiny. Many TAs are unqualified, and while Estelle Morris has stressed that the Government wants to move away from the stereotype of the "mum's army", training is still problematic and incoherent. Although there is a lot of training on offer, the opportunities for support staff to take part in it are very uneven, and there are issues around course equivalence and quality control of the training.

Nearly half of the assistants in the OU study said they experienced difficulties attending courses, due mainly to transport and family commitments. And one in ten assistants had paid for recent training themselves, which seems unreasonable.

This situation may change if the Government sees through its plans to foster the return of up to one million women to the labour market. It sees the support role in public sector services as an important way of increasing employment opportunities, and is considering devising a generic support staff NVQ at level 3.

Theoretically this new qualification would qualify people to undertake a support role in various public sector services, and it would be sufficiently broad to enable employees to move flexibly from sector to sector. However, this suggestion raises questions about the viability of a generic qualification for people working in specialist support roles in education, health or the police service, for example.

One way of overcoming these objections is to create specialist support service qualifications at NVQ level 4 which cater for these workers. However, this development would pose questions about the relationship of current DCE (NNEB) courses to any new training and the need to ensure that qualifications continue to equip staff with the appropriate skills for the job they do.

Dr Alan Marr is research fellow in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, Faculty of Education and Modern Languages at the Open University

Further information

* The two-year Open University study into the employment and deployment of classroom assistants in primary schools was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Alan Marr can be contacted at a.l.marr@open.ac.uk