A quick guide to the EEF guidance on TA deployment

In March 2025, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) released new guidance on the Deployment of Teaching Assistants. This is an update and reframing of the 2015 guidance on Making the Best Use of Teaching Assistants. There is little that is new or different in this guidance.

It is clear that ‘effective TA deployment is first and foremost a strategic issue’ (p.5). Therefore the focus audience for the guidance is schools’ senior leaders. There is a recognition that some elements might be relevant to a wider range of staff. However, it continues to fail to address the needs of class teachers who most directly engaged in TA deployment within the classroom.

The most significant change in this guidance is a subtle shift from an underlying questioning of the impact and value of teaching assistants to a recognition that they are ‘crucial to the work of schools and colleges across England. Their contributions are invaluable, particularly for those pupils most in need of additional support. The TA role is broad, changeable and context specific.’  (p. 4). Their value is particularly linked to the provision of SEND support. They are seen, despite resourcing and staff constraints, as vital to help maintain inclusivity in schools.

The EEF rightly maintain the greatest impact on children’s learning, particularly those from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, comes from high quality teaching. The guidance is therefore clear that TA deployment needs to be planned and TAs should supplement and not replace teachers, as part of a learning environment that meets all pupils’ needs (p.4). There is a recognition that this is complex and involves a range of people and actions.

However, it fails to fully address the conflicts inherent in these ideas. The TA’s role is increasingly becoming essential for inclusion and support for many of our most vulnerable children while at the same time the demands of the curriculum, insufficient SEN funding and training means for an increasing number of children with SEN, including SEMH needs, their primary educator is a TA and not a teacher. This includes an increasing number of schools who are setting up informal ‘inclusion’ units or classes to support children who are unable to access the mainstream classroom. Many of these children have been identified as needing specialist placements which are not forthcoming. Often these groups are TA led. This particular issue is not even considered in this guidance which is firmly focused on provision within mainstream classrooms. In these settings, the issue is often a shortage of appropriate support staff and so how they would be deployed, if they were present, remains a secondary and unaddressed issue.

The guidance is based around 5 key recommendations divided in focus between practice and implementation. Each recommendation is supported by an illustrative vignette. The previous guidance included 7 key recommendations. The reduction in recommendations is due to an amalgamation, not change in the key ideas.

Key recommendations

Making the Best Use of Teaching Assistants (2015)	Deployment of Teaching Assistants (2025)
Recommendation 1: TAs should not be used as an informal teaching resource for low attaining pupils. This is clear that TA should not be used as informal teaching resource for the most vulnerable pupils.	Recommendation 1: Deploy TAs in ways that enable all pupils to access high-quality teaching. This is clear that TAs should supplement, not replace teachers and that the pupils who struggle most should spend at least as much time with the teacher as other pupils, if not more. For this to be effective there needs to be a good working relationship between teachers and TAs to ensure that they meet all pupils’ needs, with the teacher retaining responsibility for all pupils. Further, TAs need appropriate training in a range of scaffolding strategies appropriate to the age, subject, and specific individual needs of the pupils they work with. It recognises the challenges where: ·       1:1 support where TA becomes the primary educator ·       Children spending excessive time out of the classroom. ·       TAs covering whole or part lessons and the related issues of liaison and information sharing and the related concern about the inclusion of TAs in whole school training. ·       Children dependent on a TA and their input to start a task.
Recommendation 2 Use TAs to add value to what teachers do, not replace them. This talks about TAs moving away from working with specific pupils, building a team around the child and the use of structured interventions to promote access to QFT.
Recommendation 3: Use TAs to help pupils develop independent learning skills and manage their own learning. This considers the importance of TA talk and the need to avoid prioritising task completion at expense of learning.	Recommendation 2: Deploy TAs to scaffold learning and to develop pupils’ independence. This focuses on the importance of effective scaffolding to support and promote pupil independence. This includes ensuring pupils have the opportunity to attempt tasks independently before a TA intervenes when they can’t proceed. There is an emphasis on metacognition.
Recommendation 4: Ensure TAs are fully prepared for their role in the classroom. This returns to the MITA projects emphasis on TA preparedness and the importance of liaison time.	Recommendation 4: Prepare and train staff around effective TA deployment. This is the recommendation where there is the greatest change in emphasis moving from preparedness for TAs to training for all staff. The focus is on ensuring clarity about the role of the TA for all in the school and training to embed this across the school. There is also consideration of teacher- TA communication so that TAs are prepared for their day-to-day roles. This includes the need for teachers to share key ‘needs to know’ with TAs. This reflects the 3 key questions included in my book Working Effectively with your TA.
Recommendation 5: Use to deliver high quality one-to one and small group support using structured interventions. Recommendation 6: Adopt evidence-based interventions to support TAs in their small group and one-to-one instruction. Recommendation 7: Ensure explicit connections are made between learning from everyday classroom teaching and structured interventions. This was in many ways the most used part of this guidance as it fitted with the EEF’s other work on effective interventions. It laid out the guidelines for effective TA interventions. Sessions are often brief (20–50mins), occur regularly (3–5 times per week) and are maintained over a sustained period (8–20 weeks). In addition, the need for careful timetabling and training to enable consistent delivery and fidelity to the intervention. It also highlighted the need to ensure that it is the right intervention for the child and that explicit connections are made between the out-of-class learning in the intervention and classroom teaching.	Recommendation 3: Deploy TAs to deliver well-chosen, evidence based, structured interventions where appropriate. This recommendation echoes much of the previous guidance that TAs can support pupils effectively through structured interventions. However, these need to be carefully considered, monitored, and linked to the classroom learning to ensure positive outcomes for pupils. It recognises the difficulties of selecting the right intervention for the right child and emphasises the need to connect out of class learning and classroom teaching. The guidance continues to work on the assumptions that interventions take place out of class and disregards the in-class interventions and their impact, and interventions delivered through tweaks and adaptions to high quality teaching. It also works on the assumption that all interventions will be delivered by TAs, and not teachers.
	Recommendation 5: Engage all staff in the process of implementing effective TA deployment. This is effectively the new material in the guidance. It recognises that effective TA deployment is complex and dependent on a range of factors. It continues to focus on the role of school leaders to embed effective practices and implementation. They should ensure that TA deployment is informed by both the underpinning evidence and the challenges of putting it into practice including: ·       Developing a whole school culture focused on HQT and inclusion. ·       The school community engages in effective TA deployment through clear leadership. ·       Planning for effective deployment and ensuring TA role clarity- considering their primary and secondary responsibilities, the issues of role creep and need for clear line management. ·       The need to communicate about TA roles with parents. This acknowledgement of the need to engage and align the school community to build a shared understanding of good TA practice is helpful. But the continued focus on school leaders rather than the day to day implementation and practice of class teachers is less so. While these actions need to be set within a whole school context and culture, the lack of focus on the development of teachers’ skills in this area continues to undermine the effectiveness of TA deployment.

There is much that is helpful and begins to move the discussions about the role of the TA forward, particularly in recommendation 5. However there are a number of key issues this guidance does not fully consider or respond to.

1.       The recruitment and retention of TAs remains an issue for many schools. This document does not address this issue or the related issue of TA pay. Hopefully, if we can improve the working conditions and impact of TAs this will impact their recruitment and retention, but I am not convinced that this is a certainty in the current jobs market.

2.       One of the biggest elephants in the room is about the training of TAs themselves. Throughout the guidance there is an emphasis on the use of scaffolding. This is one of the most overworked words in education. There is generally a lack of clear understanding of what is meant by scaffolding or how it should be implemented effectively. This means that too often untrained TAs revert to task completion and direct correction of errors. In recent years, this has been exacerbated by the use of ‘workbooks’ in different forms, both in primary and secondary schools. These promote the view of learning as task completion and that learning is evidenced by the completion of the required pages, with or without children's understanding of the key concepts. Completion of learning in this way is not always appropriate to promote children's independence, as it requires learning to be evidenced in a particular way that may not be appropriate for a particular child. This includes where tasks need to be completed on paper but a child needs to use IT to demonstrate their learning or more rarely vice versa. For a TA to be able to manage this effectively requires a high level of training, understanding of the curriculum and liaison with teachers.

3.       Training for TAs should only be part of wider whole school training, with a focus on the needs of class teachers. In 2017 only just over half of newly qualified teachers felt confident to manage and deploy support staff in their classrooms[1]. As I argue in my book, Working Effectively with your TA, the issue of training class teachers to work effectively with TAs remains a key weakness in their effective deployment.

This guidance recognises the need for whole school engagement in TA deployment but continues to focus on the strategic issues and the work of school leaders. While the overall direction of TA deployment comes from school leaders, the day to day implementation is in the hands of class teachers. Without an increased focus on how TAs are deployed within classrooms their deployment will continue to be ineffective and inconsistent.

[1] Department for Education (2018). Newly qualified teachers (NQTs): annual survey 2017. [online] GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/newly-qualified-teachers-nqts-annual-survey-2017.