Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support his Department is providing to (a) special schools and (b) other specialist education settings on the recruitment of teaching assistants.
The government’s Teacher Vacancies Service is a free, national job listing service that is saving schools money and delivering quality candidates. This service can help schools to list vacancies for both permanent and fixed term teaching staff, including teaching assistants.
Schools have the freedom to make their own decisions about the recruitment and use of teaching assistants. The school workforce census for the 2019/20 academic year showed there were 6,000 more teaching assistants than the previous year.
In the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Green Paper, the government committed to support schools and academy trusts on how to best use and train their teaching assistants.