heart of heartlands lessons

Whilst campaigning, the former US president Ronald Reagan stuck closely to the simple maxim: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing”. The success of Donald Trump and the “Make America Great Again” campaign (incidentally a not particularly subtle rehash of Reagan’s 1980 slogan “Let’s make America Great Again”) should not surprise anyone. Although the fact you can buy merchandise including caps, towels, swimming costumes and even baby grows emblazoned with ‘MAGA’ might.

The ability to convey complex messages in a simple, instant and intuitive manner to the public is obviously useful. In April 2015, David Cameron made a speech in which he repeated the slogan, “making work pay”. It’s effective as a slogan because its short, immediately comprehensible, and an idea which resonates with the majority of the electorate. But it hides multiple layers of complexity and ambiguity which the public may not necessarily be interested in and which the politician almost certainly wouldn’t want to detail.

Unsurprisingly, the education sector has not escaped this problem.

Headlines such as 'Teaching assistants blamed for poor results' (The Telegraph) and 'Teaching assistants don't boost pupils' progress, report finds' (The Guardian) are a prime example of the way much research, particularly educational research, is reported by the mainstream media and policymakers.

Oftentimes, research which has taken years to complete and reports which can run into hundreds of pages, are conveyed in short headlines; and in most cases, headlines that the researchers themselves hadn’t intended. There are two main problems with this approach and their impact on young people and those who work with them can be catastrophic.

So, what happens when provocative findings from research receive coverage, but are poorly, or inaccurately reported?

Firstly, newspapers rarely verify the credibility or quality of the research they quote from. In some instances, this research has not been peer-reviewed, or contains sample sizes that make the findings insubstantial at best, and irrelevant at worst. The second and more common issue is that often, the understandable need from the media and policymakers to explain complicated research findings in an easily understandable format, means that they often misrepresent the actual recommendations of its author.

In this instance, the headlines at the start of this blog came about as a response to a study carried out by British Educational Research Association between 2003-2009. This study was then used by the Educational Endowment Foundation to report on the impact of Teaching Assistants on Pupil Progress:

As you can see from the graph at the top of this blog post, in simplistic terms this study concluded that “The more support pupils received, the less progress they made.” Combine this with the cost of providing this additional support and it’s easy to see why people drew the conclusion that not only were TAs not improving pupil progress, they were in fact hindering it. This had immediate and significant ramifications for TAs and SEN departments across the country. A survey carried out at the end of 2017 by The National Association of Head Teachers, which received almost 600 responses from school leaders, found that 80 per cent have reduced the number, or hours, of teaching assistants.

During a talk given by the author of the DISS survey, on which the EEF report and subsequently the headlines are based, Rob Webster ( a researcher at the UCL Institute of Education) explained not only his frustration and regret at the way in which his research was being misinterpreted, but his anger at the way it distracted from addressing the important issues actually raised by the research.

Anyone who read the actual report or looked into subsequent programmes and support offered by its author, will clearly see the view that schools stand to gain far more by rethinking their use of TAs rather than by doing away with them altogether.

So what is the advice? Well the easiest way to find out is to click on the following link: ‘Maximising the Impact of TAs’

However, I would outline the following 5 key questions to school leaders who want to maximise the impact of their Teaching Assistants:

1. Have you carefully defined the role of TAs and considered their contribution in relation to the drive for whole-school improvement?
2. Do you think carefully about the deployment of TAs - are you allowing them to have an impact?
3. Are teachers responsible and accountable for the progress and development of all the pupils in their class, including those with additional support?
4. Is it possible for teachers and TAs to collaborate and plan together?
5. Do your TAs supplement, not replace, teachers?

For more information:

http://maximisingtas.co.uk/assets/content/ta-standards-final-june2016-1.pdf

http://maximisingtas.co.uk/research/the-diss-project.php

http://maximisingtas.co.uk/resources/making-best-use-of-tas-eef-guidance.php

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/maximising-the-impact-of-teaching-assistants/