Unison finally noticed that teaching assistants are being used as cheap teachers:

Christine McAnea, of Unison, said the practice was “endemic” as it cost less to use support staff to cover teacher absence than to buy supply teachers.

England schools Minister Jim Knight said teaching assistants eased the burden on teachers, but should not lead classes “for more than a short period”

It costs about £150 a day to employ a supply teacher, but about £50 to pay support staff.

Rosemary Plummer, a Unison representative, said in the last few months more than 40 teaching assistants from a small area of London had told her they felt they were being asked to do more than they were qualified for.

“They’re delivering maths, they’re delivering literacy and marking work - that’s a teacher’s job… they’re being used as cut-price teachers,” she said.

You don’t say? Can you believe they’ve only just noticed? I don’t understand why is the NUT not screaming about this too, it is teachers they are replacing after all. Maybe supply and part time cover teachers don’t matter either.

Many teaching assistants are extremely competent but they are not teachers. I know TAs in primary who are doing all their own planning, target setting, and marking for the teachers whose PPA time they cover. For this they are paid only for the hours they actually teach, (no planning time), at Level 3 - not even HLTA rates, even though they are qualified to that level. They also have the joy of teaching with no support, which never happens to the normal teacher in that class.

source

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Unison gives TAs strike advice

Unison has warned UK teaching assistants that they could be disciplined and lose pay if they refuse to turn up for work on Thursday. Up to 7,800 schools will be disrupted with as many as 1 in 3 schools completely closed in some areas.

Unison has told its members that legally they should work as usual on Thursday if the teachers’ strike goes ahead. They should just not do any work normally done by teachers. It’s not really clear if this includes covering classes that the TAs might cover normally for PPA time. Those classes are, at least in theory, supervised by teachers so it’s definitely a grey area.

Unison suggests TAs can show support by attending meetings outside their working hours.

For TAs in schools that are expected to shut fully on Thursday, it is possible that they will lose pay or be expected to put in the hours at another time. In some areas schools will only be partially closed with some staff in but no pupils. TAs will be expected to turn up to school and get on with other duties. I can see a lot of resource areas getting that much needed clean up no one ever has time to do!

People will have to check the position in their particular school. Don’t just stay home because the school is closed, check with your local union rep. There shouldn’t be any picket lines as the NUT has asked members to attend meetings instead. If you turn up and there is a teachers’ picket line I don’t envy you. Personally I couldn’t cross one and then look those people in the eye over tea break the next day. Having said that I don’t remember a huge amount of solidarity from teachers the last time TAs took strike action….

Meanwhile, on Twitter, lots of teachers are planning to spend the day catching up with paper work and planning lessons! Sheesh - you are meant to be on strike guys! Y’know, going to meetings etc, not working! Oh and by the way, that probably includes not edublogging, twittering about work to your personal learning network, finding cool new resources to play with and all those informal learning activities you don’t get paid for anyway!

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Music seems to be a bit of a theme on the blog at the moment. An old friend from Ultraversity days, Sarah Hackett, got in touch recently to tell me about her new venture. Sarah did some fine research (First Class in fact!) for her final year project on using Moodle and video coaching to work with groups learning folk fiddle. If you are going to TeachMeet08 North East London edition you might be lucky enough to hear her talk about it.

Her new venture takes that work and extends it out to a wider audience:

Folk Fiddle lessons online

Learn OnLine 4 life and Laugh Out Loud 4 Life
Learn Folk Fiddle tunes by ear and and improve your aural skills, memory, musicianship, awareness of harmony, violin technique, appreciation of musical form and structure, and enjoy practical application making sense of music theory in a logical way. Most importantly though - have a great deal of fun and get involved in a really sociable activity!

Sarah’s work is always innovative and interesting. She provides a flavour of what people can expect:

A free course of online lessons

I have posted videos for the tune Trip To Matlock that you can access without charge so that you will be able to get an idea of what to expect.

Please would you give a donation to one of the charities suggested in the Trip to Matlock News Forum for the use of these videos. There is no need to sign in - just click on the blue i button to find out how to access.

The site is great for individuals or could be used by schools groups. Sarah’s charges are very reasonable and you’d certainly be getting expert coaching.

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Originally uploaded by Edublogger
TeachMeet08 North East London
Come one come all to TeachMeet08 the North East London unconference for anyone involved in education. You do not have to be an adviser or coordinator, in fact it’s really meant for those that are actually doing it in the classroom. This event is for primary and secondary and they are stretching a point and letting me in even though I teach adults

An Un conference

This means no long presentations and no sales pitches to sit through. In fact powerpoint is discouraged! You can use video clips or images to illustrate your meaning.People put themselves down to speak for either seven or two minutes. During this time they talk about their experiences with technology in their schools

How it works

There is no strict running order. Speakers are chosen at random, using the electronic fruit machine and administered by the MC

Registration

TeachMeet08 North East London
You must register on the wiki if you want to go. First log on

A couple of people have struggled with that so here are some screenshots of how to log on to edit the wiki:

Then on this screen:

Once you are in you can register to do either a micropresentation (7 mins), a nanopresentation (2mins) or be an enthusiastic lurker. Your choice

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“Every primary school should have a maths specialist and parents should have a less negative attitude to the subject”

According to the BBC an interim report by Sir Peter Williams says the UK is one of the few developed nations where it is acceptable to say you are “useless at maths”.

Such attitudes will not help children see maths as an essential and rewarding part of their daily lives,

The study suggests the amount of in-service maths training primary teachers receive is inadequate. Although most (I’d assumed it would be all by now) teachers do have the basic requirement in maths for teacher training - GCSE maths at C or above.

All HLTAs and many TAs also have to have maths GCSE in order to even be considered for a job.
The report had a go at parents as well. It says they needed to have a “can-do” attitude to maths and to learn the modern techniques their children were using to help them and give them a love of maths.

So what do we get from this? More initiatives and funding for family learning perhaps? Parents expected to not only support the children whilst they do homework but also to make time themselves to learn the techniques schools are using to teach maths? I’ve been involved in family learning in school before and they are great for those who do get involved. The trouble is it’s never the parents you really need to reach who turn up to them.

One of the biggest contrast I’m seeing at the moment though is between these attitudes and those of some of my Teaching Assistant students. Mostly educated in non-European countries they express a deep love of Maths and a high level of confidence in their own abilities. They have exactly the ‘can- do’ attitude the report wants to promote, understand that maths is vital to children’s learning and actually look forward to numeracy lessons. As far as I can see the main thing they have in common is that they all did the International Baccalaureate.

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Modesty prevents me from saying who wrote the lead article in the current issue of the ICTopus Sharing Good Practice magazine

” Issue 8 of Sharing Good Practice is now available. This issue looks at three very diverse aspects of social interaction: Linda Hartley writes about teachers and teaching assistants using blogs, wikis and other forms of social software for informal professional development, Janice Staines tell us about some great resources for citizenship education and in the Inclusion slot we have an anonymous article on the ways in which technology has enabled one special child to communicate.”

My article, Sugaring the Pill, is about using blogs and wikis for informal learning by making stuff that’s relevant and useful to teachers and teaching assistants, things like the Classroom Displays Blog and Usefulwiki. The idea for the article came from a blog post I did a while ago Why is it so hard for educators to focus on their own learning?

The magazine is a pdf file and you have to create a log-in to view or download, for now. Creating a registration is a good idea as you don’t just get access to the pdfs but also good lesson ideas for integrating technology too. ICTopus is brought to you from some folks who were very involved in BECTA and has some great stuff. Sharing Good Practice has been going for a few months now and is usually a good read, with one lead article and some regular features.

Sometimes it feels like a bind to have to create a registration but it’s often the only way for funded projects to actually track and show impact to their stake holders. That ability to show impact is vital to continued funding and it’s a growing problem in the online world. But that’s another blog post….

ICTopus Sharing Good Practice magazine

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News: Survey reveals TAs’ unpaid work
Survey reveals TAs’ unpaid work

School support staff are still doing regular unpaid work outside of their hours, researchers have found.

The government-funded survey is based on information from nearly 3,000 support staff who returned questionnaires last year, and follows a similar survey in 2004.

It found that two thirds regularly work more hours than their contract says, and only half of these are paid for the extra time.

Most of the overtime is voluntary but a quarter of respondents said they worked extra hours because they were told to.

“The results reveal the extent to which staff can feel obliged to work extra hours to their contracts,” says the report.

Not much change since I did my degree then! Seriously though this was one of the things that put me off a job in an otherwise excellent school. There was a huge expectation that support staff would be prepared to work far beyond their paid hours. People who didn’t want to do that were warned not to take their applications further, as they ‘just wouldn’t fit in here’!  Teaching assistants needs were not even considered for a moment. Now it’s all well and good putting the children’s needs first, we all do that, (I hope!) but there has to be a recognition that staff have personal needs too and that people are more useful and productive when they are in school if they have time and energy for their outside interests. Grrrr

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