Working as a Teaching Assistant can lead to a new career

Becoming a Teaching Assistant is a highly rewarding and valued job at our school.

Zak Munton (pictured above) started off as a Teaching Assistant and is now a Teacher of Mathematics and PE at Spalding Academy. He said “The reason I wanted to become a Teaching Assistant was to help progress my teaching career and understand how to support students in a variety of settings. I started to understand different ways to help students and gained great satisfaction from seeing students flourish, when working alongside them. I learnt so much as a Teaching Assistant as I was able to understand a range of teaching strategies, and these strategies helped when I started my initial Teacher Training within the Trust. This certainly helped with my career progression from a Teaching Assistant to a fully qualified teacher. The opportunity I was given, for the role of a Teaching Assistant, has helped propel my career and given me the confidence to be an aspiring teacher within the Trust and shows the different ways your career can progress.”

We have Teaching Assistants at the school with staff who have joined after Sixth Form, currently studying or want to fit in a job around the personal commitments. There is no typical Teaching Assistant, but they all share one thing in common and that is they all find it rewarding to help students.

Working in the SEN team, you will provide additional support in the classroom for students and have the opportunity to be involved in extra-curricular activities at the school. It could become a springboard to a career working in the school such as it did for Zak. Many Teaching Assistants also progress into pastoral roles and we will help support staff in the career progression.

We know that it is important that staff work in a supportive and pleasant learning environment. Our students are polite and well-behaved plus the teachers in the classroom are supported with exceptional pastoral care.

The latest Ofsted reports for schools in our Trust highlighted that the school is calm and orderly, learning is rarely disrupted, students feel safe, staff are proud to work at the school, students with SEND receive the right level of support and the provision for SEND is of a high quality. These are some of the many reasons why Teaching Assistants choose to come and work at the schools in our Trust.

The actual pay for a full-time Teaching Assistant is £19,505 to £20,081 per annum (actual). In addition to this, there is a SLAT Teaching Assistant Responsibility allowance (TAR) of between £500 and £2,000, which may be offered to suitable candidates.

Working 32.5 hours week your normal working hours will be 8.30am to 3.30pm and the job is term time only for 39 weeks a year. We would also consider part-time candidates working 3-4 days a week.

We are currently looking for new Teaching Assistants to join the schools in our Trust from September 2024.

No formal qualifications are required and for the appropriate candidates full training will be given. We do however, prefer a minimum grade C in GCSE English, Maths and Science.

If you are interested in finding out more about becoming a Teaching Assistant, please contact:

• Bourne and Cowley Academy – email hradmin@bourneacademy.org or call 01778 422365
• Spalding and Giles Academy – email jayne.simpson@spaldingacademy.org.uk or call 01775 722484.