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There has been a great deal in the news recently about the role of teaching assistants in our schools. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it has been proposed that headteachers should consider reducing the number of teaching assistants working in their schools, as a cost cutting measure.

I have taught with and without a teaching assistant and I’m sure many of you will agree that without their support our job is made more difficult. A teaching assistant provides invaluable support, helping in the day to day running of a classroom. Their role becomes even more important in classrooms with a large number of children with special needs, for it is often the teaching assistant who is assigned the job of working alongside these children. I would go as far to say that a reliable and competent teaching assistant is worth their weight in gold.

In a good school the staff work as a team and teaching assistants are part of that team. I realise that hard decisions have to be made and that we must make savings in education, but teaching assistants are valued colleagues who are most certainly not surplus to requirement. Let us support our teaching assistants before it’s too late…we need them!!