Building Expert, Evidence-Informed Teaching Assistants
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
At Right to Succeed, we know that improving outcomes for children and young people requires more than strong teaching alone.
It depends on the whole school community sharing a clear understanding of how learning works and how best to support it.
Teaching Assistants play a vital role in that community. Yet access to structured, role-specific professional development for support staff is often inconsistent.
Recent research has found that only around half of school support staff receive training tailored to their role.
That gap matters.
When Teaching Assistants are equipped with the right knowledge and strategies, they can play a powerful role in strengthening learning, supporting pupils’ independence and helping to close the disadvantage gap.
That is why Right to Succeed partnered with Pinnacle Learning Research School and Manchester Communication Research School to design and deliver a Teaching Assistant Development Programme.
The programme set out to build confident, evidence-informed Teaching Assistants while strengthening literacy support for some of the region’s weakest readers.
Grounding practice in evidence
Delivered across three structured training days, the programme focused on developing knowledge, sharpening practice and strengthening professional identity.
Participants explored a range of topics, including:
What evidence-informed Teaching Assistant practice looks like
The science of learning and the simple model of teaching
Scaffolding and metacognition
Professional communication and collaboration with teachers
At its heart was a commitment to moving beyond isolated strategies and instead building a shared understanding of how learning happens.
By drawing on guidance from the Education Endowment Foundation, the programme ensured that the approaches explored were grounded in robust research rather than quick fixes.
This helped Teaching Assistants understand not just what to do in the classroom, but why those approaches support learning.
Literacy across the curriculum
A key thread throughout the programme was the importance of literacy.
When pupils struggle with reading, writing or vocabulary, those challenges rarely stay within English lessons. They affect access to learning across subjects including science, maths and humanities.
For this reason, the programme explored how Teaching Assistants can support disciplinary literacy, helping pupils develop the language and understanding needed to access subject content.
Participants considered practical ways to support vocabulary development, modelling rich talk, reinforcing key language and helping pupils move from simply encountering new words to genuinely understanding and using them.
Embedding these approaches across the curriculum helps ensure that literacy becomes everyone’s responsibility, not just the role of English departments.
From reactive support to intentional practice
Alongside literacy, the programme also explored the effective deployment of Teaching Assistants.
Research shows that impact depends not only on what Teaching Assistants do, but also on how and when they are used within the classroom. The training, therefore, focused on helping participants move from reactive support towards more intentional, learning-focused practice.
This included exploring how to:
Scaffold learning without creating over-reliance
Use questioning to deepen pupils’ thinking
Support access to challenging texts
Work in partnership with teachers to align support with learning intentions
By focusing on these principles, Teaching Assistants were able to shift from supporting task completion to supporting the thinking behind the task.
A shift in professional identity
One of the most powerful outcomes of the programme has been the shift in how Teaching Assistants see their role.
Participants began discussing concepts such as scaffolding, metacognition and memory with greater confidence, and applying them deliberately in their daily practice.
Rather than seeing themselves simply as classroom helpers, many are now positioning themselves as evidence-informed practitioners who contribute directly to learning outcomes.
As one Research School partner reflected, the most significant change has been Teaching Assistants moving from activity-led support to asking deeper questions: What is the learning intention? What thinking do we want pupils to do? How can we scaffold independence?
Continuing the work
The programme marks an important step in strengthening the role of Teaching Assistants within the wider learning community.
Right to Succeed will continue supporting participants as they embed their learning in practice and work with Literacy Leads to share strategies across their schools.
Because when Teaching Assistants are equipped with the knowledge, confidence and professional identity to support learning intentionally, their impact reaches far beyond individual pupils.
It strengthens the entire system around them, helping more children and young people to thrive.
For a more in-depth look into the impact of the Teaching Assistant Development Programme, download and read our report below.
