These 330,000 individuals – overwhelmingly women – help keep teachers' stress and workload levels in check, maintain classroom discipline and provide learning, emotional and physical support to children with special educational needs (Sen) enabling them to enjoy a mainstream education.
Recognising the value of TAs – a group who make up 25% of the school workforce – is overdue, not least because of the rough ride they've endured recently. Austerity saw funding for training scrapped, then the coalition's "bonfire of the quangos" ruined the creation of a national body for pay and conditions for school support staff. The public sector pay freeze has also kept TAs' already low wages depressed as living costs rise.
The most recent storm TAs weathered followed reports suggesting the Department for Education was considering reducing the number of teaching TAs. This suggestion was originally made in a report from the Reform thinktank on potential savings to the education budget.
As the authors of the research on which this recommendation was based, my colleagues at the Institute of Education and I have argued that such action is not only based on a partial reading of the evidence about impact, but that is likely to do more harm than good for students, teachers and schools.
So for 2014, rather than a couple days of celebration, I'd like to see a year of action to seriously improve the role and function of TAs. The timing couldn't be better. In September, new reforms will change how schools address the needs of Sen students, including a new code of practice. At the same time, schools will receive more money to spend on struggling disadvantaged students via an increased pupil premium settlement.
Historically, the work of TAs has been inextricably linked with support for these students. It seems inconceivable that schools will put these new reforms and changes into practice without considering the role of TAs. Evidence shows what schools can do to improve how they deploy and prepare TAs and to ensure they make a meaningful contribution to learning, plus a process for putting it into action.
There are three main actions that school leaders, teachers and TAs need to take.
School leaders need to set out a vision for the role and purpose of TAs in their school, defining the contribution they will make to learning. This means addressing some fundamental questions about what TAs can and should be expected to do, given that they tend not to have the same levels of teaching and subject knowledge as teachers. For school leaders who want to seriously engage with rethinking the TA role, help is at hand.
Research shows that teacher-TA liaison time before lessons is rare, so TAs often go into classes without knowing what will be taught, what tasks will be done or what the teacher expects from the students. As teachers, have you ever had to teach an unfamiliar lesson or subject at short notice? Did you perform at your very best? Probably not, because you didn't have full knowledge of the topic or much notice to prepare. For TAs, this situation is par for the course.
TAs can only be as effective as teachers enable them to be and they shouldn't have to mind-read. Think carefully about TAs' contribution to learning and communicate your intentions to them. Inform them of the skills or knowledge the students they support should be developing, and what learning you want them to achieve by the end of the lesson.
TAs can have a potentially transformative impact on learning by making small adjustments to their practice. A growing number of schools are reaping the benefits of changing the nature of TAs' interactions with students. You can read my tips for sharpening TAs' practice here.
There is more we can do to maximise the impact of TAs, but these three areas are a good start. What's more, there can be no better demonstration of a whole-school commitment to giving TAs the attention they really deserve.
Rob Webster is a research associate at the Institute of Education and freelance consultant/trainer.