Pupils’ attainment improved by teaching assistants, research suggests

The work of teaching assistants in schools has been shown to improve pupils’ attainment in two studies funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).

Around £4 billion each year is spent by the Department for Education on teaching assistants and it has been questioned in the past if this large bill delivers value for money in terms of their impact on pupils’ learning.

The EEF has released new research which they claim provides ‘compelling evidence’ to suggest that teaching assistants can have a positive impact on learning and improve the attainment of pupils they work with.

The research suggests that using teaching assistants in substitute roles will not help to improve attainment, but when used to head structured sessions for small groups, teaching assistants have a positive impact.

The first study involved the evaluation of six different teaching assistant-led interventions, with 2,100 children in 148 schools. All six evaluations found that teaching assistants leading small group or individual sessions resulted in an additional two to four months progress for pupils.

A second study was based on over a decade of research from the University of York into the usefulness of REACH intervention, which is designed to improve reading ability. The first version of REACH involved pupils reading aloud while the teaching assistant kept a record of any errors they made; the errors would then form the basis of the rest of the session. This was found to improve progress by around six months of average.

The second version followed a the same structure, but placed a greater emphasis on language comprehension training and the understanding of words, and was fund to improve progress by 4 months.

The EEF has launched a £5 million campaign centred on making the most of teaching assistants, which aims to promote how teaching assistants can be best utilised in the classroom.

Kevan Collins, chief executive of the EEF, said: “Teaching assistants have been much maligned in recent years and many schools have scaled back on their employment to cut costs. But today’s results prove that when they’re used to deliver small-group interventions, they can have a great impact on pupils’ attainment.

“With so many teaching assistants employed across the country, schools now have compelling evidence to make sure they’re using their own teaching assistants in ways that really improve results.”