{"id":331142,"date":"2025-12-23T06:59:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T06:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331142\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T06:59:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T06:59:06","slug":"teaching-assistants-pay-shocking-despite-complex-pupil-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331142\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching assistants&#8217; pay &#8216;shocking&#8217; despite complex pupil needs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A report by the Labour Research Department for Unison said support staff &#8220;bear the brunt of behaviour issues, including violence&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since the pandemic, they have faced more poor behaviour and greater numbers of pupils with complex needs, Unison said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rosie Lewis, Unison Cymru&#8217;s head of schools, said: &#8220;Often our members are suddenly expected to undertake roles administering medication and, more alarmingly, quite personal intimate interventions such as inserting catheters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;These are staff who work long hours, often helping out, going on residentials.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;At Christmas time, helping with school plays, getting costumes ready, all of this on top of their daily tasks and they don&#8217;t get any extra pay for that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The report found that many teaching assistants were in single-income households and a significant proportion were reliant on benefits.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It said school support staff, 90% of which are women, are often &#8220;the first to go&#8221; when schools cut jobs because of tight budgets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At the same time, schools struggle to recruit because pay rates &#8220;are not competitive compared to jobs in hospitality and retail&#8221; and there is a high turnover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A report by the Labour Research Department for Unison said support staff &#8220;bear the brunt of behaviour issues,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-331142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}