When Sue Bolton first worked as a classroom assistant, the job was about “poorly knees and being the mum at school for the children who were missing their mothers”. Eleven years later, she works in the same Berkhampsted school, but the job has changed beyond recognition. As autumn sunshine streams through the windows of Greenway first and nursery school, she quietly runs a class in the school’s computer suite - a room she helped to plan and design. And although she has never trained as a teacher, no one would know. By the end of the lesson, most of the Year 3 class are well on the way to designing their first poster.

“She is amazing,” says her head, Bobby Cadwallader. “She can teach adults, she can teach young people, she can take Year 4, she can take reception. She can do anything.”

Welcome to the world of today’s teaching assistants. Once they were there to clean the fish tank and water the flowers; these days, they are pushing the boundaries of their jobs in all directions. Many move on to train as teachers, but more and more are coming to see their job as a career in its own right, with a focus on supporting pupils, running activities, and mediating between teachers, children and parents. And the Government has recognised their growing importance by announcing plans to significantly increase their numbers by 2006.

Good classroom assistants tend to be pragmatic, can-do personalities with an ability to learn fast. And unlike teachers, who can moan and groan when their chosen career doesn’t meet expectations, assistants often fall into their work by chance, and are bowled over by what they get out of it.

Sue Bolton says she has done just about every job there is to do in the school, and now works as an unqualified teacher and ICT co- ordinator, even though her computer skills are entirely self-taught. “I’ve always been a bit of a techie, taking plugs apart and things like that, and when I got my own computer I just loved it. I started to sort out all the problems in school and find the right software and help the teachers.” Along with her head, she recently went on a professional trip to China, to see what ICT teachers are doing there.

Bobby Cadwallader makes no apology for having such staff. She employs three unqualified teachers and is “very much in favour of them. I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t have staff if they couldn’t do the job. But when you have able, professional people, you must use them.”

Sue Bolton is just one of a talented raft of 17 regional winners in this year’s Teaching Assistant of the Year award whose varied roles point up the expanding possibilities of the job. John Sutton, former general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, says that when he was asked to be a national judge for this category, he wasn’t sure what he was in for. But when he started visiting schools, he was “surprised and impressed”.

He says: “We saw teachers discussing with classroom assistants how a lesson had gone, and how it could be improved. We saw how much classroom order and atmosphere were improved by difficult youngsters getting attention and being supported. We heard children say they would talk to Mrs So-and-So when they wouldn’t go to a teacher, and that they knew she’d sort it out. ” All of which means the role is developing fast enough “to make some teacher unions edgy about it”, he says, although he notes that two things must always be in place before this development can happen - a school smart enough to realise what a great asset its assistants are, and assistants who can see the full potential of their job.

Penny Jones saw the potential of hers and grabbed it with both hands. She arrived at Bexhill high school, an improving 11-16 comprehensive on the East Sussex coast, seven years ago after working with teenage boys at a local college. At the time, the school had just three teaching assistants. Now it has almost 20, and Penny Jones is their line manager. She runs a briefing for them each morning, has written a handbook for new assistants, organises a two-week induction for people taking up teaching assistant jobs, and mentors every assistant once every two weeks. That’s in addition to sorting out learning support for almost 300 students, liaising with parents and advising teachers on classroom strategies. She is soon to start training other teaching assistants for the local education authority.

“People are often surprised I don’t want to be a teacher,” she says. “But about four years ago I sat down and thought, ‘Maybe this can be a career.’” She has collected qualifications and experience, and has the kind of personality and communication skills that, she says, teaching assistants need if they are to work in partnership with teachers without treading on their professional toes.

“And the school has been so supportive. We are recognised as equal to teachers. The teachers know we have valuable insights into individual pupils’ needs and learning difficulties, and that we can work together to deliver the curriculum and develop students’ learning.”

The only part of her job that hasn’t developed is pay. The school has introduced an assistants’ salary scale to help develop job opportunities, but Penny Jones, at the top of it, still earns only pound;10,900 - less per hour, points out Lynne Bayes, the school’s special needs co-ordinator, than her son gets for his Saturday job working in a local supermarket.

“This role has been evolving in the school, and we have been pushing it forwards,” says Ms Bayes. “But twice recently we’ve had perfect candidates for jobs, and when they found out how much they’d be paid they said it wasn’t enough. We expect a professional job, but that’s not being recognised in the pay.”

Clare Taylor, who works at Coleridge community college, Cambridge, says no one would ever be a teaching assistant for the money. “But I love my job. It’s the best in the world.” Like many assistants, she came to it through helping in her children’s primary school, before taking up her current job in secondary school, where one pupil in four has special needs.

“I trained as a hairdresser, a window dresser, and a credit controller. But only when I had my own children and started helping in school did I find my vocation.” Her role has been to support small groups of students who need extra help. Last year she followed a group of Year 10 boys from lesson to lesson.

“There was a Thai boy, a Jamaican, an Irish and an English one. A teacher has 30 pupils in the class. They haven’t got time to find out everything about them, but I knew everything there was to know about those four boys.”

One of her students says:“I’ve been kicked out of loads of schools. I wouldn’t be here still if it wasn’t for this lady.”

Now she has used prize money from being the regional award winner for the eastern region to set up a vocational hairdressing course in school - and, as the instructor, now has a teaching assistant of her own.

Dawn Bradshaw, on the other hand, is happy to stay a teaching assistant. She started out at the Aveland high school in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, by “sitting in classes very quietly and not participating much”. Nine years later she runs a team of 10 assistants, organises and manages the special needs register, writes education plans for special needs students, liaises with local primary schools, works with parents and helps place students on vocational courses. She also plays piano and guitar in the school band, gets involved in school drama, and is just finishing an Open University degree. “I did think about doing my teacher training, but I’m glad I didn’t,” she says.

“We have a different perspective on school life. We have a different relationship with the kids. We can advise teachers on their needs, and come up with ideas to help. And we can get away with doing things the teachers can’t. For World Book Day we all came in in curlers and nighties to read bedtime stories.”

Jayne Horn’s job is entirely different. Her work at Northdown primary school, Margate, Kent, involves running out-of-school learning, and liaising with families, many of whom face difficulties. “I always found talking to people easy, and parents need to feel comfortable with you if you’re going to encourage them to let children stay after school.”

She runs a breakfast club for 50 children, and art, music, drama and sports clubs for almost 150 after school. She also works on Saturdays and in the holidays to make sure the programme is of real use to working parents. And while the money is not good, “I get a lot of satisfaction out of my job. I like having an impact on children’s lives. I like thinking of things then making them happen.”

Lyn Owen works for Lathom county high school, Skelmersdale, Lancashire, where she runs a language club, and has stepped in for teachers who are off ill - getting good exam grades for her pupils. She has also written a booklet for new teaching assistants, and is being asked if she will work with other schools that want to make more use of them.

One thing she is likely to tell any newcomer to the job is that learning from watching excellent classroom practice is a privilege. “But you must never get in the way of the teacher.”

Because the partnership is delicate, most assistants go out of their way to praise the help given them by teachers and, in schools where relationships are good, teachers speak warmly of the support they get from assistants. But there can be tensions, and one school with a rapidly expanding teaching assistant programme admits that older teachers have sometimes resented what they have seen as non-professional interference.

But training and pay are bigger problems for most teaching assistants. New courses and foundation degrees are springing up, but age and family responsibilities often hamper people from furthering their professional training, and many say they wish they could get study credits for their school experience, or that on-the-job training was more easily available.

As for the pay, it is, they say bluntly, pitiful. It fails to reflect the new realities of the role, and ways must be found to reward people for their experience and responsibilities if the job is to carry on developing as the Government clearly wants it to.

Josie Adlard, last year’s Teaching Assistant of the Year, who works at St Martin’s Church of England infant school, in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and who has been awarded the MBE for her commitment to education, says this could change as people talk more about it. But part of the problem is that so few people realise what teaching assistants do. “When my husband heard what people said at last year’s awards, he was amazed,” she says. “He had no idea how much responsibility I had in school. People think we wash paint pots. But life’s not like that any more - we have parent helpers to do jobs like that.”

The Teaching Awards 2002 take place at the Drury Lane Theatre in London on Sunday, October 27. The ceremony will be shown on BBC1 on Sunday, November 3. To register your nomination for 2003, visit www.teachingawards.com

THE SHORTLIST

The 17 candidates for Teaching Assistant of the Year are: Wendy Arthur Meadows school(South-east, special school)

Julie Baker Inglewood infants (North-east and Cumbria)

Barbara Bates Oakgrove (North-west, special school)

Irene Bloor Hassell primary (West Midlands)

Sue Bolton Greenway first and nursery (East)

Dawn Bradshaw The Aveland high school (East Midlands)

Sally Cushnan Randwick CE school (West)

Grace Davin St Colman’s primary (Northern Ireland)

Jayne Horn Northdown primary(South-east)

Penny Jones Bexhill high school (South)

Jan Lloyd Leighton primary (Wales)

Lyn Owen Lathom high school(North-west)

Teresa Pridmore Boroughbridge high school (North)

Glenis Smith Glenbrook primary school (East Midlands)

Heather Stabler Rokeby Park primary school (North)

Clare Taylor Coleridge community college (East)

Brenda Tippett Lipson community college (South-west)