EEF News
‘Compelling evidence’ to make sure £4bn spent annually on TAs is used to improve results 13th January, 2017
‘Compelling evidence’ to make sure £4bn spent annually on TAs is used to improve results
School leaders now have ‘compelling evidence’ to make sure the £4bn spent on teaching assistants each year is used in ways that
improve results for pupils, the chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has said today. Sir Kevan Collins’
comments come as the education charity publishes the results of two separate trials that demonstrate how teaching assistants can
have a positive impact on learning.
Previous research has shown that the ways teaching assistants are traditionally used in classrooms, for example as substitute
teachers for low-attaining pupils, do not help learning. With £4bn, or 10% of the education budget, spent on their employment each
year, there has been an urgent need to find out how to use them more effectively.
Since 2011, the EEF has funded evaluations of six different teaching assistant-led interventions, with 2,100 children in 148 schools.
All of these interventions have supported teaching assistants to deliver structured sessions to small groups or individual pupils. All six
evaluations, which include today’s two new results, have found this approach to have a marked positive impact: the programmes
resulted in an additional two to four months’ progress for pupils, giving teachers and school leaders solid evidence on the best ways
to use teaching assistants in their classroom.
The new reports published today include an independent evaluation of the Nuffield Early Language Intervention, a programme
originally developed by a team of researchers at the University of York with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, and adapted by
researchers at University College London. The intervention was delivered in the trial by the charity I CAN . In this intervention,
teaching assistants were given three days of training and detailed lesson plans so they could lead short, structured sessions, often
around everyday topics like ‘time’ and ‘what we wear’, with small groups of nursery and reception pupils. Rewarding the children was
an integral feature of each session, from targeted verbal praise to more formal incentives like a ‘Best Listener Award’, given to the
child that has listened well in the class. The evaluation found a 30-week programme improved the vocabulary, grammar and listening
skills of four and five-year olds by as much as four months.
The EEF-funded trial, evaluated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and NatCen Social Research, tested two versions of the
intervention across 34 schools and nurseries: a 30-week programme that started during the final term of nursery and continued
during the first two terms of reception year in primary school, and a 20-week programme that ran during the first two terms of primary
school. The effect of the 20-week version was slightly smaller, but the pupils still experienced the equivalent of about two months’
additional progress.
Also published today are the results of an independent evaluation of REACH, another intervention led by teaching assistants and
designed to improve the reading skills of struggling readers in Years 7 and 8. Two different version of this programme were evaluated
by teams from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Ipsos MORI: both versions provided one-to-one sessions with a TA three times a
week for 20 weeks.
Based on over a decade of research from the University of York, the REACH intervention combines reading aloud with awareness of
the different sound structures of words. In the first version, pupils read aloud while the teaching assistant kept a record of any errors
they made; the errors would then form the basis of the rest of the session .The second version followed the same structure but placed
a greater emphasis on language comprehension training and the understanding of words.
Both REACH interventions had a positive effect on the reading skills of the pupils in the trial. Pupils receiving the second version of
the intervention experienced the equivalent of about six months of additional progress on average. For pupils receiving the first
version the figure was slightly smaller at four months additional progress.
For more information, videos and supporting resources, please visit:
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/
Copyright © 2017 Education Endowment Foundation
EEF News
‘Compelling evidence’ to make sure £4bn spent annually on TAs is used to improve results 13th January, 2017
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With 240,000 teaching assistants in the UK, the potential impact on attainment of using them in the best possible ways is huge,
particularly for disadvantaged pupils. To make sure this becomes the rule and not the exception, the EEF has launched a £5m
campaign centred on Making the best use of Teaching Assistants, a guidance report that provides seven practical and evidence-
based recommendations for using teaching assistants. The report’s recommendations are being implemented in hundreds of primary
schools across Yorkshire.
Sir Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, said today:
“Teaching assistants have been much maligned in recent years and many schools have scaled back on their employment to cut
costs. But today’s results prove that when they’re used to deliver small-group interventions, they can have a great impact on pupils’
attainment.
“With so many teaching assistants employed across the country, schools now have compelling evidence to make sure they’re using
their own teaching assistants in ways that really improve results.”
NOTES TO EDITORS:
1. The Education Endowment Foundation is a charity set up in 2011 by The Sutton Trust, as lead charity in partnership with Impetus Trust (now part of
Impetus–The Private Equity Foundation), with a £125m founding grant from the Department for Education. It is dedicated to breaking the link between
family income and educational achievement. Since its launch the EEF has awarded £71 million to 121 projects working with over 750,000 pupils in over 6,500
schools across England.
2. the Teaching and Learning Toolkit is an accessible summary of educational research developed by the EEF in collaboration with the Sutton Trust and a team
of academics at Durham University led by Professor Steve Higgins. The expanded Toolkit covers 34 topics and summarises research from over 10,000
studies. The Toolkit is a live resource which is regularly updated. Today’s two new ndings will feed into it.
3. In Yorkshire, the EEF has invested £5m to improve the impact of teaching assistants, focused on primary schools in West and South Yorkshire. The campaign
is centred on a guidance report that offers seven practical recommendations for schools to use their TA support for maximum pupil impact.
4. Nuf eld Early Language Intervention was developed with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, which funds research and innovation in education and social
policy and also works to build capacity in science and social science research.
5. I CAN is the children’s communication charity, helping children develop the speech, language and communication skills they need to thrive in a 21st century
world.
For more information, videos and supporting resources, please visit:
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/
Copyright © 2017 Education Endowment Foundation