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Teaching assistants across Wales have been instrumental in ensuring pupils enjoy the magic of the Christmas season, yet many find themselves struggling financially during this costly time of year, according to a union report. Public services union Unison highlights that the profession, predominantly female, faces low pay and increasing job challenges, often being unfairly impacted by deteriorating student behaviour in schools. The report also points out that school support staff frequently undertake extra duties—sometimes including invasive medical procedures—without appropriate training or compensation.
One experienced teaching assistant, Janet Murray, who transitioned from being a dinner lady to working in classrooms over two decades ago, explains how her role has grown more demanding and specialised over time. Based near Swansea, she praises her supportive workplace but laments that her pay and conditions have not improved proportionally with the expanding responsibilities. “We became much more skilled—our expertise, our experience, our continuity with the children—that became far more important,” she states. Murray also notes that the needs of children have intensified, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, with pupils presenting higher levels of anxiety and social difficulties. Despite her strong commitment, she describes her salary as “shocking” and admits that raising her daughter on her earnings has been difficult, relying at times on benefits to make ends meet.
Another teaching assistant, Kim Huntley from Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, has served in the profession for 17 years and observes a growing number of children entering school unprepared, with some still in nappies. Huntley reveals that it was only five years into her career that her salary reached the income tax threshold. She shares her frustration that equivalent earnings could be made in less demanding roles outside education, such as hospital jobs or retail, but emphasizes that her motivation remains the children she supports. Now working with the union, Huntley worries about how her former colleagues will cope financially during the Christmas season, saying, “I honestly don’t know how they are going to provide that magic at home.”
The Labour Research Department’s report for Unison highlights that support staff often face the worst of behavioural problems in schools, including violence, with these issues becoming more common since the pandemic. Unison’s head of schools in Wales, Rosie Lewis, underscores the growing range of responsibilities school staff are expected to fulfill, including medication administration and intimate interventions like catheter insertion, often without additional pay. She remarks, “At Christmas time, helping with the school plays, getting costumes ready, all of this on top of their daily tasks and they don’t get any extra pay for that.” The report further shows that a significant number of teaching assistants are the sole earners in their households and rely on benefits. Due to low pay, schools are struggling to recruit and retain these staff, with high turnover rates compounded by competition from higher-paying sectors such as hospitality.
In response, Unison is advocating for the establishment of a Wales School Support Staff Negotiating Body to replace the current National Joint Council system governing pay for educational support staff across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This change could help reduce pay disparities among local authorities and address the problem of term-time-only pay, which results in lower annual incomes. The Welsh government has expressed its commitment to creating such a negotiating body, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging and fairly compensating school support staff for their valuable contributions. A government spokesperson said, “Teaching assistants support some of our most vulnerable learners and deserve, in line with our commitment to social justice, to be recognised, remunerated and treated fairly for the fantastic work that they do.”
Political responses to the issue have been mixed. Plaid Cymru’s education spokesperson Cefin Campbell MS criticised the Welsh Labour government for failing to support school workers adequately but welcomed the commitment to a dedicated negotiating body. The Welsh Conservatives called for attracting more teaching assistants into the profession, while also accusing Labour of misdirecting priorities. Natasha Asghar MS from the Conservatives claimed that the government’s focus on matters like private schools’ VAT has distracted from education’s core challenges. Meanwhile, Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Jane Dodds MS emphasized the crucial role of teaching assistants and expressed her party’s desire for them to receive proper recognition and valuation for their exceptional work
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