Today, we’re looking at a number of different research reports—most of them the Government’s own—that point to a growing mismatch between its mainstream inclusion ambitions and schools’ ability to recruit and retain the teaching assistants needed to deliver them.
Evidence is something that the Department for Education claims it’s very keen on when it comes to the SEND White Paper proposals. So another slew of recent reports bear reflecting on–because they can’t possibly mean this evidence, can they?
Firstly, “The role and experience of support staff in schools” by the Department itself, which commissioned Ipsos UK to survey over 9.5k support staff from across England’s primary, secondary and special schools, as well as conduct 32 interviews with school leaders.
What this and other research highlight is the dire state of satisfaction and availability of teaching assistants, who will be crucial to making the proposals work—whether that’s supporting children in mainstream classes, or in the thousands of new “inclusion bases” every school will have.
The breakdown of support staff in schools
The staff in the survey included 49% who worked as teaching assistants (TAs)/ learning support positions. These broke down as
- 68% of the special schools respondents,
- 54% of the primary school respondents and
- 27% from secondary level.
Others included midday supervisors/assistants. In secondaries, there is a wider range of staff, including health, pastoral and welfare staff, administrative, finance and technical staff.
Almost all learning support staff work with SEND pupils, with school leaders reporting a shift in recent years away from general class support, towards more dedicated support for pupils with Education, Health and Care plans (EHCPs). It’s quite likely, therefore, that many of these roles are funded by an individual child’s EHCP—and this possibly isn’t something the government has considered in its plans to strip mainstream children of EHCP support.
Training for TAs
Only just over half (54%) surveyed feel they have sufficient training and information to work effectively with pupils with SEND, and well over a quarter (27%) say they need more specialist training and resources. Sixty per cent report cited “rising numbers” of SEND pupils as one of the “barriers” to providing enough support; half (48%) cited limited funding, while a third (34%) said lack of time.
Training opportunities were said to be ‘“uneven” although most (85%) special school staff report receiving SEND-related training in the last three years (you would hope so!), compared to just over half (53%) of primary school staff and well under half (42%) of secondary support staff. So clearly, they’re well-ready for an influx of more children with unmet needs…
On the day-to-day side, TAs are shown as doing a very broad mix of work.
- 96% worked with pupils with SEND,
- 90% supported pupils’ personal, social and emotional wellbeing,
- 90% provided one-to-one or small-group support in class,
- 88% had general teaching-and-learning support duties,
- 88% supervised pupils at lunch or break,
- 77% helped monitor or record pupil progress, and
- 69% supervised classes in teachers’ absence.
A Unison survey on support staff found similar, with further breakdown of work carried out as:
Behaviour management (54%) | One-to-one support (48%) | Looking after children with complex needs (47%) | More interventions (47%) | Medical support (41%) | Class or lesson cover (40%) | Lunchtime supervision (37%) | Administrative duties (32%) | Toileting (31%) | Planning and preparation (31%) | Cleaning (22%) | Managing children’s dietary requirements/allergies (22%) | Breakfast or after school clubs (14%) |
TAs don’t feel valued by those who should value them the most
All this is for the pitiful term-time-only wage they get, which you can easily beat by working in a supermarket for a whole lot less hassle. The Unison survey showed the most common pay range was £1,200-£1,399 a month. The NFER Workforce survey says this works out at around 30–35% lower than comparable workers.
And this shows in the job satisfaction scores: The DfE survey showed TAs overall job satisfaction was 58%, the lowest of all the support-staff roles reported. 85% (most of whom did at least two hours overtime per week) said they were dissatisfied with pay–58% of these “strongly disagreed” they were satisfied.
74% of TAs felt valued by pupils
74% of TAs felt valued by pupils
84%of TAs felt valued by their colleagues.
94% of TAs felt undervalued by the government
89% of TAs felt undervalued by their trust or local authority
59% of TAs felt undervalued by school leaders
46% of TAs felt so undervalued that were actively looking for better paid work elsewhere.
98% of TAs said they’d witnessed violent behaviour by pupils
Some TAs told Unison they felt so undervalued that close to half (46%) were actively looking for better-paid work elsewhere. Almost all (98%) said they’d witnessed (and many had been subjected to) violent behaviour by pupils, but to a small extent also from parents/carers, and even from other members of staff. Among staff who’d experienced a violent incident, 47% did not feel supported by their headteacher, and 65% had not received training on handling violent situations.
Challenging classrooms
Recent SENCO research also describes children with needs they believed required specialist provision, staff being hit or bitten, and schools making “impossible choices” because staffing, specialist input and external services were too thin. And that’s now.
Meanwhile, the Schools Omnibus Survey, which we’ll look more at later, shows that in special schools, teachers facing a “challenging classroom situation” rely heavily on class support staff for help, and they are far more likely to lean on other teachers for help to “emotionally process and reflect” after the situation than anyone else.
New DfE guidance now explicitly says staff likely to need to use restrictive interventions should be adequately trained, and schools should carry out risk assessments. Will we see greater use of physical restriction because more children are in mainstream who should in specialist settings where their needs can be better managed? The answer can only be yes. What mum, looking for a bit of extra money in term-time (historically, how a large percentage of TAs start off), is going to want to plunge into this?
So, given all this, who would be a teaching assistant? Undervalued, low-paid, and a violent workplace.
Recruitment may be the spoke in the wheel of the Government plans
Indeed, recruitment is a massive problem. The DfE’s study showed school leaders also said low pay is a major problem for recruitment and retention–and this is backed up by stark recent research by NFER / Nuffield showing three in four school leaders are struggling to recruit teaching assistants, saying it’s harder to recruit TAs than it is teachers.
This echoes an earlier 2024 DfE’s teaching assistant study, with both showing 75% of leaders said recruiting TAs was fairly or extremely difficult. The DfE study showed the difficulty rose to 82% in secondary schools
The NFER study says more support staff are leaving–one in five left the state-funded school sector between 2023-25. And it’s not just finding staff that’s hard: 9 in 10 leaders told the DfE it’s the required skill set that makes the task more challenging, with 81% specifically struggling to recruit for specialist SEND skills.
At the same time, 53% of secondary and 51% of special schools cited the need to increase TA numbers, because of rising numbers of pupils with SEND. Good luck with that, then.
Is there a secret stash of would-be support staff just waiting to be unleashed to claim those undervalued, underpaid roles? Do tell.
A conflicting picture
We know that, despite the Government banging on about “too many” children in specialist settings, our research shows most children with SEND already ARE in mainstream school, including 56% who have EHCPs. But according to the above surveys, schools are still struggling.
No doubt the government will point to official statistics showing overall, TA numbers ARE rising. But given the above attrition rates, continuing rises in numbers of children with SEND, the addition of those (post reform) who would normally go to specialist placements being shoehorned in, AND the numbers needed to staff “an inclusion base in every school”, it’s hard to see how the critical mass required can be achieved.
We don’t know how, or if, “statutory” Individual Support Plans (ISPs—basically pre-2014 rebranded IEPs) will have any additional funding attached. This is crucial because if children with significant SEND needs will be in mainstream without EHCPs that fund their teaching support, schools will somehow need to replace that. We all know that 1:1 TAs, funded entirely by an individual child’s EHCP, very often help other children too. And they’re still paid and kept busy when the child they’re supposed to support is not in school for whatever reason.
If 1:1s are fewer because EHCPs are fewer—and because the government still misinterprets research that claimed they can be “bad” for independence–then the money will need to come from somewhere. That will need to be significant, long-term, reliable funding that pays a living wage, that isn’t also the first target of cuts next time there’s a funding squeeze.
How much Inclusive Mainstream Funding will be enough?
In 2024, the National Audit Office pointed to insufficient resources and capacity within mainstream schools and shortages in specialist staff as reasons why support is not being delivered well. It also highlighted long waits for speech and language therapists and educational psychologists. Indeed, school capacity and availability of specialist input to support children with SEND are one of the main concerns of these proposals (besides the trashing of rights).
The DfE’s support study shows these concerns have not been alleviated. As well as rising numbers of SEND children, as mentioned earlier, staff see the main barriers to supporting pupils with SEND as limited funding (48%) and lack of time (34%).
As Matt explained last week, the government has the first £500 million of a previously announced £1.5 billion inclusive mainstream fund (IMF) to be pushed to LAs and academy trusts in June. It’s aimed at funding resources to make everyday teaching more inclusive, including decision-making. Presumably, this is to stop schools telling parents their child “can’t be supported”. Where it says it’s to create “safe, calm and accessible learning environments”, who will be surprised to learn this means more separate rooms to push unsettled children into, away from everyone else? But as Matt also pointed out, £14k this year per primary and £42k per secondary won’t go far. The DfE has stated “permitted uses,” but how that’ll be made accountable isn’t clear.
The government has promised 6,500 additional teachers, concentrated in secondary, special and FE settings. Again, no one thinks this is adequate, and it is not a plan for thousands of extra TAs, therapists, behaviour specialists or SENCOs capacity–and these are the roles that these reforms will depend heavily on to succeed.
Will highly competitive academies that use exclusion as a behaviour tool suddenly turn into nurturing, welcoming schools? Answers on a postcard.
The voice of schools and families: The SENCO role is pivotal
These aren’t the only new reports. The new Omnibus School and College Voice survey is also out. It looks at a range of school issues, including training, although where teachers and TAs are going to find time for it all is another question.
The government has already announced £200 million for training, although we don’t yet know all the details. Currently, the School and College Voice survey respondents say only 6% of primary and 3% of secondary teachers have used the current DfE-funded SEND training, excellent though it is. Teaching assistants can also use this, as can parents if they want to; it’s all free. We’ve consistently called on the DfE to dedicate more resources to publicising it.
Frances Akinde recently discussed the pivotal role of the SENCO; this survey underlines that, showing most teachers get their SEND training from their SENCO: 89% in primary and 92% in secondary. Post-reform, the SENCO is going to be even more under pressure, and this is often not a dedicated role.
When it comes to identifying SEND in school, that reliance on others is amplified even more: almost all (99% primary; 91% secondary) class teachers reported that they spotted SEND needs through classroom observations, with a slightly lower number (96% primary; 88% secondary) cited speaking with colleagues. The views and experiences of parents came in third (86% primary; 49% (!) secondary). Speaking to pupils themselves, using assessment tools and seeking external specialists came way down the list.
So, this shows that the expertise of the SENCO and how good they are at disseminating training and information is of such great importance in mainstream schools that this role must be prioritised.
- It MUST be a statutory part of the senior leadership team,
- It MUST be a standalone role with no class or other major non-SEND-related responsibility, and
- They MUST be an expert at working with families.
- None of these things appears in the White Paper.
As a final word, Unison says while it welcomes the new School Support Staff Negotiating Body, this alone isn’t enough: “If SEND reform is to be sustainable, teaching assistants must be recognised as central to how the system works, not simply as flexible support…Inclusion cannot rest on goodwill and flexibility alone. It requires clarity, structure and proper resourcing.”
We need to see more about how TAs, teachers and SENCOs are going to be supported—we haven’t seen it yet.
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Also read:
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
Also read:
- Philippa Stobbs OBE: Reform plans must have a clear line of sight from children and young people with SEND to better outcomes.
- Where will all the teaching assistants come from? The research exposing the reality gap in the government SEND plans
- The SENCO as gatekeeper: The White Paper proposals bring a responsibility of opening doors, not closing them
- National Education Union’s Daniel Kebede: “Reforming SEND cannot be done on the cheap”
- “We are living on a knife-edge” SENDCo research sounds the alarm about the high cost of mainstream inclusion
- What schools and parents need to understand about supporting autistic and neurodivergent children
- What’s in the Curriculum and Assessment Review for children with SEND?
- Living with PoTS: Understanding Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia syndrome and how schools can help
- Teachers fear education policy reforms will make things worse, not better, for children with SEND
- Supporting secondary pupils with additional needs: Top Tips learned as a SENCO and a SEND parent.
- Why nurture groups and effective nurture practice are vital for whole school inclusion
- How Plymouth is approaching “Ordinarily Available Provision” for pupils with SEND
- Successful Additionally-Resourced Schools: A 13-step strategy and a 7-point “purpose”
- The same but different: Understanding SEND and inclusion in schools today
- SEN Resource Bases and Unit Provision in Secondary—what are they and do they count as inclusion?
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She is a rare disease & chronic pain patient advocate with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN - August 4, 2026
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them” - July 30, 2026
- EOTAS Consultation: A further assault on children’s SEND rights with cost saving and reintegration to schools at its heart - July 15, 2026
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