16 Of 21 Results Went The Wrong Way For Teaching Assistants

England spends £4.4 billion a year on teaching assistants — 13% of the education budget — and the biggest study ever done on how they're deployed found 16 of 21 results pointing the wrong way. This is not an episode about TAs failing; it's an autopsy of an arrangement, built from the EEF's Making Best Use of Teaching Assistants: how schools drifted, with the best of intentions, into giving the most vulnerable pupils the least qualified adult — and what survived the evidence. Structured interventions delivering three to four months' additional progress (with real training and real programmes), least-help-first, the "need to knows", and why the pupils who struggle most should get as much teacher time as everyone else.

Printable one-pager for this episode, free: https://theeducationcommute.co.uk/#newsletter-staff

Two free newsletters, one for staff and one for parents and carers, same evidence written for the person reading it.

Sources:

• Making Best Use of Teaching Assistants (guidance report), EEF — Sharples, Webster & Blatchford — https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/teaching-assistants
• - PDF — https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/production/eef-guidance-reports/teaching-assistants/TA_Guidance_Report_MakingBestUseOfTeachingAssistants-Printable_2021-11-02-162019_wsqd.pdf
• - DISS project findings, Tennessee STAR, MAST/SENSE — as recorded in the EEF report and attributed that way in the episode

Disclosure: both voices on this show are synthesised (NotebookLM, Google) — the research, reading and editorial judgement are done by a serving practitioner.

Actions for consideration:

• Audit one lesson this week with your highest-need TA-supported pupil: least-help-first, or a TA sitting beside them the whole time?
• Stop writing "X hours of TA support" on provision maps as if hours were the provision — specify what the adult actually does.
• Move structured interventions onto a real timetable: 20–50 minutes, 3–5×/week, 8–20 weeks, with a trained TA and a real programme — not "period five when we can find a room."
• Build in liaison/preparation time so TAs get the "need to knows" before a lesson, not during it.
• Ask TAs what they know about a pupil that isn't written anywhere — and get it into the plan.
• Strand: Teachers