Have a transparent monitoring system in place
Regular observation of teaching assistants (TAs) is useful for monitoring their effectiveness, which will also involve looking at how teachers are using TAs' time.
Your monitoring system should make clear:
- How you'll highlight, record and follow up any issues
- How you'll report the results of monitoring and timescales for any improvements
- How monitoring links to performance management
- Whether monitoring will be ongoing, weekly, monthly, or termly
Speak with pupils
Finding out about pupil experience is an important part of monitoring TAs’ effectiveness. You could ask pupils:
- Who they ask for help and who helps them most
- Whether the TA has helped their learning
- How the TA has helped them
Read more about pupil voice in our other article.
You could observe this during a learning