Assisting teaching

Teaching assistants and support staff

Teaching assistants (TAs) are a valued and integral part of the education workforce, playing a crucial role in supporting our children and young people.

Whilst the majority of support staff are deployed in the classroom supporting teachers and working directly with learners, many are deployed in other support roles that schools depend on to ensure that the school runs smoothly and efficiently.

We are committed to continuing to enable TAs to improve their skills and help them to engage with professional learning by facilitating clearer learning pathways, including pathways to achieve the status of higher level teaching assistant (HLTA).

Information about the professional learning available for teaching assistants and how to gain the HLTA status can be found on the career-long professional learning page.

Activities to support those assisting teaching

We are currently working with partners to support those assisting teaching.

This includes a Social Partnership Forum Teaching Assistants Workforce Board, which is considering several key issues including deployment of teaching assistants, access to professional learning, standardisation of job descriptions and pay. 

We have also established a Professional Learning Steering Group to look at all professional learning for TAs in Wales. The steering group is made up of Headteachers, Practitioners, Regional Consortia and unions. The aim of the steering group is to ensure equality of access to targeted, high quality and consistent training for our teaching assistants.

We have already developed some good practice playlists to help headteachers, showing how TAs have been utilised over the past 2 years.