One such course began this month with a two-day intensive introduction at Marconi College, in Chelmsford. It will, says course organiser John Bald, equip successful candidates to provide “an extra mind in the classroom, not just an extra pair of hands.”

For the 30 women on the course, the pilot provides a welcome opportunity to improve their professionalism and, perhaps, their status in schools. One, Linda Grant, became a classroom assistant through the volunteer route, like the majority of the Essex participants.

“Originally, when my daughter was at school, I’d been helping with the usual mother things - cooking and reading,” she says. “Then when a vacancy came up the head asked if I would like to apply.” Mrs Grant, 48, has since worked in both infant and junior schools, and is now employed at Ramsden Hall School in Billericay, a boarding school for emotionally and behaviourally disturbed boys aged 11-16. She has, at times, found the assistant’s role limiting. “It depends on the teacher’s personality,” she says.

“It can be very much putting pictures on the walls and making up the paints. You tend to be a dogsbody, really, although some teachers will want to use you in a more constructive way.” But while students on the course say they have felt under-used, most have also had the experience of being occasionally out of their depth. “The school’s so busy, it’s easy to wonder if you’re doing the right things, or approaching things in the right way,” says Mrs Grant. “I’m hoping to get some clear guidelines on how to go about things, and do them correctly.”

Half of the student group is employed to work with children with special needs, a challenging job even for people with extensive training. One said that “possibly, people like us need more specialist knowledge than the teacher. Some of the children need very individual approaches.” Some students have had the galling experiences of being severely over-stretched, and at the same time, little appreciated. One was given particular responsibility for a special needs child who hid under the table when she entered the room; it took months to establish a relationship with the girl. Another said she received more recognition for her role as dinner lady than her role as specialist teacher assistant for children with special educational needs. “People seem to think we’re just some sort of volunteer,” she said.

The aim of the training, as laid out by a DFE Note of Guidance last year, is to make specialist teacher assistants competent “under the teacher’s direction, to assist the teaching and support the learning of the basic skills, especially at key stage 1.” The Essex course, devised jointly by literacy specialist John Bald and maths tutor Ian Grant, both formerly of Essex Education Department, is designed to develop competence in a range of areas.

Case studies of individual children’s progress in English and maths provide the main focus for the students’ work, and together make up 60 per cent of marks awarded. In the English case study, students will assess the literacy needs of one child, develop realistic targets in co-operation with a tutor, and apply practical techniques learned on the course before measuring the child’s progress.

The course syllabus is supplemented by practical work with pupils, in-school tutorials with a designated staff member, private reading and half-termly group sessions. Students are also required to spend some time observing children in a school other than their own. At the end of the course, which is accredited by Middlesex University, successful candidates will receive a STAR (Specialist Teacher Assistant Record) from the DFE.

Credits gained will be recognised by Middlesex as the equivalent of a term’s full-time study, and creditable to any of its other courses. The course standards are approximately equivalent to those encountered in the first year of a BA.

Not surprisingly, many students are approaching it with some trepidation. Tegwynn Roberts, 44, left school at 15 with no exam passes after a period of illness. “I found the idea of this kind of study very daunting at first, ” she says. “I told the head I didn’t have the qualifications, but she said, ‘You’ve got years of experience you can fall back on’.”

Students are expected to spend some nine and a half hours per week on course-related activities, over one academic year. While some of this is being timetabled in by heads, as in-school tutorials with a designated member of staff, students also need to put in several hours’ private study per week.

For some students, the first challenge is to find the requisite time for reading at home. Mrs Roberts, for instance, works 20 hours per week as a non-teaching assistant for special educational needs at Thameside County infants school in Grays. She puts in hours over and above her paid time at school, works part-time in a department store, and has three children still at home. “It’s a bit worrying,” she says, “finding the time for the reading material.”

But the course has been designed to cater for the crowded lives of students such as Mrs Roberts. A substantial part of the course introduction was devoted to study skills, to tips gleaned from the Open University on how students can make “protected time” for private reading, and how to get the best out of it. “The format is genuinely accessible,” says John Bald. “And it’s compatible with other commitments. Assignments contribute to the work students are already doing with children.”

The pilot courses are a sign that the DFE anticipates an enhanced role for specialist teacher assistants. “Specialist teacher assistants are not teachers,” says John Bald. “The key point is that the assistant has a very distinct contribution to make, and needs specific skills.”

But Linda Grant notes the stress on the “assistant” role in the DFE notes on the training of STAs. “The DFE is obviously afraid you’re going to get above your station,” she says. “I think we should never forget we are a cheap substitute for extra teachers. But still it’s better if we know what we’re doing.”