England is running out of teachers. Excessive workload, bureaucratic demands and inadequate systems of support have driven down rates of job satisfaction, and with it, rates of teacher recruitment and retention (McLean et al., 2024). With the cost of supply teachers becoming increasingly unaffordable (Martin & Norden, 2024), getting qualified teachers in front of classes is a daily preoccupation for school leaders.

So what happens when there are not enough teachers to go round? Research described in my new paper for the British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) (Webster, 2024) suggests that schools are plugging these gaps by deploying teaching assistants (TAs) to cover classes and teach lessons.

While the deployment of TAs to cover short-term, short-notice teacher absences (for example, due to sickness) is not new, results from a survey of nearly 6,000 TAs in mainstream and special schools in England and Wales, conducted in early 2024, reveal that one in four TAs report having to cover classes because their school does not have enough teachers and/or is unable to get in supply teachers.

‘The amount of cover TAs provide is far from trivial. Two in five TAs cover classes for at least five hours a week. Over a school year, that is roughly equivalent to half a term’s worth of cover.’

The amount of cover TAs provide is far from trivial. Two in five TAs cover classes for at least five hours a week. Over a school year, that is roughly equivalent to half a term’s worth of cover. Fifteen per cent of TAs said they are expected to teach entire classes for at least 11 hours a week, often planning and assessing whole subjects where a teacher had left and not been replaced.

Despite national guidance stipulating that cover by TAs should not involve ‘active teaching’, three-quarters of TAs said that covering classes inevitably involves them having to teach pupils and deliver curriculum content. Remarkably, TAs report flying blind and solo, without either a lesson plan or support from another TA.

The routine and extensive deployment of TAs to cover classes impacts schools in two important ways. First, it diverts TAs from carrying out the activities for which they are trained and in which they are most impactful; the delivery of interventions and support for pupils with additional needs is disrupted. Second, the demands of cover and expectations to teach are causes of stress, anxiety, job dissatisfaction and extra workload for TAs, not least because their roles and duties are not backfilled when they fill in for teachers.

With three-quarters of TAs reporting that they are not paid an uplift for covering classes – and those who are receive as little as 20 pence extra per hour – it is not surprising they describe themselves as providing ‘teaching on the cheap’.

The new BERJ paper adds depth and detail to the empirical record of how schools are responding to the ongoing challenges of teacher shortage and supply, and provides evidence of a spillover effect of the crisis, in the form of indirect impacts on TAs and the pupils they typically support.

Research has shown that in many classrooms, TAs have inadvertently become the primary educators of pupils they support (Blatchford et al., 2012; Webster, 2022). The conclusion from this study that TAs actively teach lessons to whole classes – too often under conditions to which teachers would object – has unavoidable real-world consequences for accountability and the professional status, pay and conditions of TAs and teachers.

A potential workload, recruitment and retention crisis relating to TAs, which the results of this study suggest is brewing, should not be treated by policymakers as a separate and less urgent problem than the one relating to teachers.

The freshly appointed Labour government has pledged to reinstate the School Support Staff Negotiating Body to address TAs’ pay and conditions, alongside a commitment to recruit 6,500 new teachers. These are welcome developments, but more is needed.

The BERJ paper concludes with an appeal for a comprehensive and co-ordinated national strategy to acknowledge, support and reward TAs, the stature and development of which should be informed by an ongoing research effort into their working lives.  

References

Blatchford, P., Russell, A., & Webster, R. (2012). Reassessing the impact of teaching assistants: How research challenges practice and policy. Routledge.

Martin, M., & Norden, J. (2024, February 16). Revealed: The ‘sickening’ rise in supply costs hitting schools. Tes. https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/school-sickening-rise-supply-costs

McLean, D., Worth, J., & Smith, A. (2024). Teacher labour market in England: Annual report 2024. National Foundation for Educational Research. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/teacher-labour-market-in-england-annual-report-2024/

Webster, R. (2022). The inclusion illusion: How children with special educational needs experience mainstream schools. UCL Press. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/152465

Webster, R. (2024). Teaching on the cheap? The extent and impact of teaching assistants covering classes and leading lessons. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4043