Responding to the diversity of learners in classrooms took teamwork, she said.
“Teacher aides work at the heart of schools in diverse roles to meet the needs of a classroom, so it is important that school leaders and teachers value their expertise and include them in planning. It’s this sort of teamwork that enables and empowers teacher aides to make the biggest difference for learners.”
Carlton School principal Gary Johnston said the school had nine teacher aides.
He said the aides were vital to supporting the teachers’ work and the learning of the students.
“They add so much value to what the teachers are doing.
“They’re vital to the running of the school, without them we wouldn’t be able to function, to be honest,” he said.
Skedgwell said teacher aides should get more recognition for their work, likening the relationship between teacher and aide to a doctor and a nurse.
“We can do just as much as what the teachers do at times ... in some ways, it’s the same as what they do but in other ways, it’s a little bit more and sometimes the acknowledgement falls a little bit behind,” she said.
Whanganui Intermediate School learning assistants Louise Nightingale, Rachel Ellery and Melissa Rerekura also say their profession needs more recognition.
The three have been working as teacher aides for 10, four and eight years respectively and during that time have filled roles ranging from learning support across a range of subjects, to pastoral care, to even covering classes if there is are no teachers.
Nightingale said aides were paid based on funding for the children’s needs.
Often teacher aides not being able to work at a school came down to schools not getting funding for them.
Ellery said often the public perception of what she does was the hardest part of the job.
“We’re not so much in the wider community seen as professionals or anything, we are mums or whatever that are filling in time or something like that and it’s seen [as] less than teachers,” she said.
However, at the same time, the stigma around getting help from them had gone down.
“I think there’s a real difference to what it was like when I was at school, learning support was a bit taboo, kids didn’t want to be seen as different or needing someone and now they all swarm to want to have someone there,” Ellery said.
Rerekura said she had seen kids she’d worked with grow up and it was clear how important a good education was.
“It’s really about what they’ve learnt at a younger age, it really shapes how they learn and cope as they get older,” she said.
All three followed the team approach highlighted by the ERO, as they said a lot of the work of teacher aides today revolved around forming relationships with students, teachers, and parents.
“If I don’t have a relationship with the kid I’m going in to help sort a problem out then they’re not going to respond to me or listen to me or want to talk to me,” Nightingale said.
Ellery said forming these types of relationships with students was unique to the work that teachers do.
“It’s probably quite hard for teachers teaching the whole class to be able to make those relationships to the level that we have to.
“I think it makes a huge difference. Sometimes it’s just having someone they can talk to that they trust and they know we care,” she said.
NZEI Te Riu Roa president Liam Rutherford welcomed the ERO report and said it further reinforced the long-held knowledge by teachers about the value of teacher aides to a classroom.
“It’s why NZEI Te Riu Roa continues to advocate for the inclusion of a teacher aide in every classroom alongside greater job stability and professional learning” he said.
“But what the report made clear was how important the collaboration and planning between teachers and teacher aides is getting the best results for our tamariki.”
