Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made of the number of teaching assistants who have left the education sector in each of the last five years.
Schools have the freedom to recruit teaching assistants according to their own circumstances. Schools have recruited an additional 10,000 teaching assistants in the last two years, according to the school workforce census. There are now 275,812 teaching assistants which is the highest on record. The Department does not collect vacancy numbers as part of the census.
The Department committed to help schools with their recruitment, use and training of teaching assistants in the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Green Paper, and refresh of the school resource management guidance. The Department will work with schools to understand how best the Government can help.