The Role of Teaching Assistants in Meeting Special Educational Needs at Mainstream Schools

Legislative developments endorsing inclusive education have led to an increased role of school support staff. The paper explores the policies and practices related to the deployment of teaching assistants as a means of facilitating the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs in England. A special attention is paid to the debate about the role of teaching assistants and their reportedly adverse effect on pupils’ academic achievements, as well as to some possible pathways to improvement. The analysis finds flaws in the deployment of teaching assistants, the training of school staff, the organization of classroom practice, and in the defining of roles within the teaching body. These controversial findings, however, do not come to mean that the increasingly inclusive system of education can function properly without teaching assistants, but that important decisions have to be made concerning the way the system utilizes this resource