The Changing Role of Classroom Assistants

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The Changing Role of Classroom Assistants

There is an increasing level of concern regarding the increasing workload of teachers within schools. A major cause of concern is also the deficit in the number of qualified teachers, which has been estimated as high as 40,000 teachers by the year 2006. On average a teacher during term time spends 52 hours working, including 20% or roughly ten hours a week on tasks not directly involved with their teaching role, such as photocopying and preparing worksheets for classes. It is widely accepted that if there are going to be improvements within the education system, this problem needs to be addressed, reducing the amount of non-teaching work for teachers and encouraging more people into the teaching career. A recently proposed method of modifying the education system in order to help achieve this, is to increase the responsibilities and levels of work carried out by classroom assistants.

Classroom assistants are members of the school staff who support fully -qualified teachers, doing non-teaching tasks within the classroom such as preparing materials, photocopying or listening to children read. They undergo the same vetting procedures as all staff working with children, and generally