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.

For Jack Spires (pictured above) there were many reasons why he wanted to become a Teaching Assistant and it has helped start an enjoyable 8 year career in the Trust.

Jack is currently a Music Instructor at Spalding Academy and said “I have always wanted to inspire, develop and support each and every student in their education. When I first started working as a Teaching Assistant at the age of 18 after doing my A-levels, I was able to see how good the lessons delivered to our students were and how our positively our students responded. It was then that I realised that teaching was the career that I wanted to pursue and after just 7 months of being a Teaching Assistant, I was able to transfer the core skills that I had learnt in the classroom to the role of teaching. For anyone who is interested in supporting young people and encouraging them to be as successful as possible, I would definitely recommend being a Teaching Assistant.”

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 their 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 Jack.

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 schools in our Trust are 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 £16,083 to £17,448 per annum (depending on experience). 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 Spalding Academy and the schools in our Trust from September 2022.

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 Vanessa Weekes on weekesv@bourneacademy.org or 01778 422365.