How can anyone possibly think a TA job is unskilled? I'm studying communication and language impairment in children and it's effects on learning. 54% of the nation-wide programs used to help children develop communication abilities, and therefore accesss to LEARNING (vital, obviously) are delivered SOLELY by TAs. 26% of the programs are delivered by TAs and teachers together.
Care to argue with those statistics?

Well done Unison for fighting the TA's corner - what about the admin and other support staff in schools who are losing money but also work many long, unpaid hours!! :(

i sincerely hope that some of the ta's who are commenting here are not correcting my child's spelling and grammar!

I agree with the comment made by Anon on 13th March, if you shout loud enough and make enough fuss you get what you want. I have worked in school admin for over 20yrs and have seen many changes, we are also losing money as part of single status and contrary to popular belief the majority of admin staff have never been paid for the holidays but find themselves coming in to do a variety of jobs, I could never understand why teaching assistants were paid as they were and think that this is a fairer system. Don't get me wrong I respect teaching assistants and think that they do a vital job but I also think there are others in schools who do just as much and in some cases more and don't moan about it all the time.

I hope the teaching Assistants who are responding are not the best example of those in their profession as their spelling and punctuation are awfull and do not reflect well on their worth in a classroom.

Some teaching assistants are better than some of our overpaid teachers, they are keen and do the training that is available to them, when teachers are off sick it is quite often the senior teaching assistant that will cover, and they do not get anything like a teachers pay nor do they get paid extra for the cover, my child is doing well at school thanks to the TA's. As for Brian, you must have a chip on your shoulder, maybe you did'nt get the attention at school that todays children get, you could always go to college! but don't expect any assistance. That's all

The people who are really qualified to comment on the role of teaching assistants are the teachers, head teachers, the parents of the pupils they work with and the pupils themselves. I believe they would respond with some very favourable comments if my experiences and those of my colleagues are anything to go by. I think we should try to ignore the comments being made by people who clearly have no idea what they are talking about!

The standard of responses from the teaching assistants is quite frankly appalling!
I weep for the future.

They're not advancing their case much with those incorrect apostrophes on their placards.

@ another brian...
if you believe teaching assistants arent just unskilled there not necessary then you are deluded my friend, does it need to be mentioned how teachers standards have dropped dramatically since you or i were at school and are now in a culture of labelling children far too easily.
If it wasnt for teaching assistants most severly disabled children would not be able to attend mainstream schools as its the teaching assistants that provide the one to one support these children require!
your also missing the bigger picture here, education is supposed to be a protected service within this government, and if they can do this to a protected service what chance have the rest of us got when cuts are made there....