Teaching assistants struggling with 'cost of living'

Oxfordshire teaching assistants say demand has increased unlike their salaries

Teaching assistants (TAs) have said their wages "don’t seem to match" the rising cost of living.

Oxfordshire TA Marion McCarthy said that schools had seen an increase in demand while salaries had not "moved too much".

Former president of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) said that "TAs are expected to do more, often for less".

Oxfordshire County Council said "the vast majority" of primary and secondary schools set their salaries "independently".

Marion McCarthy said the TA salary at Grade 4 "hasn't moved too much at all"

A BBC Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed that the average yearly TA salary in Oxfordshire is £24,765.

The response shows that the average salary, equivalent of a full-time salary, for TAs in schools maintained by Oxfordshire County Council, has increased by £1,869.84 since October 2023.

Ms McCarthy, who works at St John Fisher Primary School in Oxford, said a teacher's salary "has gone up quite a bit but the TA's at Grade 4 hasn't moved too much at all".

She added that the last few years had been "harder" because "everything has gone up so much where our wages don’t seem to match that at all”.

Headteacher Lynn Knapp said the TA job descriptions matched the county council's

Lynn Knapp, headteacher at Windmill Primary School in Headington, said she considered herself "lucky" if she received one application for one TA position.

She said she believed that the aftermath of the pandemic had played a part in the shortage of interest, with companies giving many parents more flexibility.

She added that the schools' TA job descriptions matched with what the county council had laid down.

Oxfordshire County Council said in a statement: "The vast majority of Oxfordshire primary and secondary schools are academies and set their salaries independently of Oxfordshire County Council.

"For the few schools run by the council, we align with the NJC Green Book – the pay and terms of conditions of employment for over 1.4 million local government services' workers is determined by the National Joint Council (NJC) for Local Government Services."

Michelle Codrington-Rogers, a teacher in Oxford and former president of NASUWT, said TAs were "often some of the first people to go" when school budgets were "tightened".

She said that "more and more" support staff were expected to step in, in the absence of a qualified teacher.

"Which then means that TAs are expected to do more, often for less," she said.

Ms Codrington-Rogers added that the shortage of teachers was "a national issue, as well as a local issue" but there was also a need of investment in the support staff.

"We are a team in that classroom and sometimes it’s about [TAs] working with individual students," she said.

“It should be a well-paid job, that means they are able to afford to live in areas that they want to live in.”

Former NASUWT president said teaching assistants sometimes had to work with individual students