Monitoring the effectiveness of teaching assistants

Read advice on evaluating the effectiveness of teaching assistants (TAs) and download template surveys, to check how much time TAs spend on different tasks each day and across a week.

Last reviewed on 28 February 2024
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 9081
Contents
  1. Have a transparent monitoring system in place
  2. Speak with pupils
  3. Carry out a self-assessment
  4. Download our templates to survey your TAs' activities
  5. Further reading

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