The teachers’ union, unison, has highlighted a problem whereby more and more teaching assistants are being asked to cover teacher absence and take full classes for maths and literacy lessons.
Whist GCSE Maths might be a qualification it has little to do with understanding how young children learn and the best approaches to take to help them. Unfortunately, most people put into a stressful situation that they are not trained for will revert back to the way they were taught themselves – not always a good thing.
Interestingly in the last ten years the number of teachers has risen by 10% whereas the number of teaching assistants has risen by 200%.