The increased use of classroom assistants could undermine the teaching profession, delegates were told at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers conference in Scarborough this week.
Terry Bladen, a member of the union’s national executive, said: “We have got to be careful that teaching assistants do not become junior teachers. The Government seems to be doing its best to blur the demarcation lines that have traditionally been there.”
The NASUWT, which calls itself the career teachers’ union, said anecdotal evidence showed that teachers are being left to clean paint pots and organise displays of work while classroom assistants were increasingly being used to teach.
The Government plans to recruit an extra 20,000 teaching assistants by 2006, and new powers contained in the Education Bill, now before Parliament, will allow ministers to define what constitutes a qualified teacher’s work and what jobs can be done by other school staff.
Delegates were warned that standards would suffer as teaching assistants and graduates training on the job were taken on to combat crippling staff shortages. They insisted classroom assistants must not be allowed to become junior teachers as the Government presses ahead with plans to expand the “Mums’ army” of school helpers.
Ministers are already considering a career structure for support staff and insists they are called teaching assistants, reflecting an escalation in their responsibilities.
Education Secretary Estelle Morris, in a pamphlet to the Social Market Foundation last November, suggested that teaching assistants could cover absences and supervise classes undertaking work set by a teacher. A report, Changing Role of the Teacher, presented to conference, said little would be achieved in cutting workload if the absent teacher was then required to set and mark the work of the class being covered by the assistant. “If the assistant is asked to teach the lesson, even using the teacher’s prepared plans, will that constitute an undermining of the professional role of the teacher?”
School standards minister Stephen Timms stressed the Government’s commitment to teaching assistants in his conference address. “We need a progressive transfer away from teachers of clerical and administrative tasks with little or no relation to pupils and improving standards. We need to look at types of pupil supervision that do not need to be done by teachers - taking the register, pastoral work, invigilating and other types of supervision that are about shepherding children rather than teaching them.”
Unison, the union representing classroom assistants called notions of a “Mums’ army” outdated. A spokeswoman said their role was to make teachers’
lives easier, not to take their jobs.
