The impact of support staff on pupils’ ‘positive approaches to learning’ and their academic progress

Abstract

In recent years there has been an unprecedented increase in support staff in schools in England and Wales. There were widespread expectations that this will be of benefit to teachers and pupils but there has been little systematic research to address the impact of support staff. This study used a naturalistic longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between the amount of support (measured by teacher estimates and systematic observation) and pupils’ ‘Positive Approaches to Learning’ (PAL) and academic progress. There were over 8000 pupils across two cohorts and seven age groups. Results on PAL were not straightforward by there was a consistent trend for those with most support to make less academic progress than similar pupils with less support, and this was not explained by characteristics of the pupils such as piror attainment or level of special educational need.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the staff and students of the participating schools for their cooperation and patience. The research was funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Welsh Assembly Government and the authors thank them for their support. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the DCSF or the WAG.

Notes

1. Numbers in separate ethnic group categories were not large and so were combined into two groups. The ‘white’ group included White British, Irish, Traveller of Irish heritage, Gypsy/Roma and any other white background. The White British group made up the vast majority of this group. The ‘other than white’ group comprised: White and Black Caribbean, White and Black African, White and Asian, Any other Mixed background, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Any other Asian background, Black Caribbean, Black African, Any other Black background, Chinese and Any other ethnic group. All categories and data were supplied by the DCSF.