Teaching assistants' experiences of delivering additional support to pupils in UK primary schools

Vardy, EJ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7825-2270, Wood, C ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1492-6501, Johnson, H and Vousden, JI ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7237-1490, 2025. Teaching assistants' experiences of delivering additional support to pupils in UK primary schools. Support for Learning, 40 (3), pp. 206-212. ISSN 0268-2141

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Abstract

Teaching Assistants (TAs) (may also be known as Learning Support Assistant or Classroom Assistants) are important members of staff within a school environment. There is guidance on the deployment of TAs; however little is known about how these recommendations are operationalised in a school settings. The aim of this research was to explore TA views and experiences of intervention delivery in their setting. Sixteen TAs participated in one of four focus groups and data from these groups were analysed using reflexive inductive thematic analysis. TAs enjoyed delivering intervention groups and felt this work was important, but they often described being left to deliver support groups with little training, relying on second-hand information from other members of staff or using their previous experiences in the absence of training. Communication was important to successfully support pupil learning. The findings suggest the guidance available is not well operationalised in practice and our findings highlight a number of recommendations from TAs on their deployment in school settings.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Support for Learning
Creators:	Vardy, E.J., Wood, C., Johnson, H. and Vousden, J.I.
Publisher:	Wiley
Date:	14 August 2025
Volume:	40
Number:	3
ISSN:	0268-2141
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1111/1467-9604.12523 DOI 2333183 Other
Rights:	© 2025 The Author(s). Support for Learning published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of National Association for Special Educational Needs. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	08 Jan 2025 11:54
Last Modified:	15 Jan 2026 16:10
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52817

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