Special needs pupils to be hit by TA axe - The Redditch Standard

Special needs pupils to be hit by TA axe

Redditch Editorial 23rd Jan, 2015 Updated: 18th Oct, 2016   0

SLASHING teaching assistant posts will hit pupils with special needs it has been claimed.

Worcestershire County Council is axing four teaching assistant positions within the learning support team which currently provides language and listening skills, phonics, motor skills and numeracy assistance in schools across the county.

The decision has been taken to make redundancies due to a reduction in activity and schools increasingly employing their own teaching assistants.

But a resident who contacted the Standard, and asked not to be named, said they still had full diaries and no recruitment had taken place for specialists within schools.




“If the skills do not exist at present and training is not provided to existing staff, then the interventions cannot take place.” he said.

“If a budget is found to recruit those with the skills then Worcestershire County Council would still be funding extra resources. There would still be an issue in being able to provide the interventions during any interim period, which again will impact the pupils.


“The worst case scenario is that none of the schools currently accommodated by the learning support team will undertake any interventions.

“Therefore the children who are most needy will be the ones to suffer.”

Coun Liz Eyre, responsible for children and families on the council, said the reduction was proposed to reflect the ‘decreased demand’ from schools needing the service.

“With regard to any proposed redundancies, this is an HR matter and therefore it would be inappropriate for us to comment further on individual employees affected by this.”

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