Teaching Assistant Forum

Every two months we hold a TA Forum that allows us to listen to the sector and allows you to share aspects of your practice to help us develop ways to support you through a range of CPD activities.

This forum is an opportunity to share good practice as well as a way of supporting one another.

If you are interested in joining our forum please contact [email protected] or [email protected]

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TA Forum Event: NCFE Specialist TA apprenticeship

Please join us for an exciting opportunity to learn more about the new Specialist Teaching Assistant Apprenticeship (STAA) here at NCFE.

This new specialist apprenticeship offers three distinct specialist routes: SEND, Social and emotional wellbeing and Curriculum provision.

Our guest speaker Allison Chatten, Product Manager for Commercial, Sales & Marketing, will be sharing further information about the new STAA here at NCFE.

Past forums

February 2025

Career opportunities: L5 Specialist Teaching Assistants apprenticeship (STAA)

Our February 2025 TA event featured the introduction of the new L5 Specialist Teaching Assistants apprenticeship (STAA). Our guest speakers, Dr. Di Swift and Andy Ogden, Trailblazer co-chairs, shared a wonderful, informative and inspirational presentation introducing the new L5 apprenticeship that aims to enable specialist support for children and young people.

We were also joined by our NCFE colleague Allison Chatten, Product Manager for Commercial, Sales & Marketing who shared further information about the new apprenticeship here at NCFE.

Di spoke about the starting points highlighted by NCFE’s report in May 2023 which explored the vital specialist role of TAs for children and young people’s holistic education and wellbeing. The three recommendations highlighted the need to:

Professionalise the role of TAs through providing relevant training and career opportunities
Provide better support and investment in recognising the needs of TAs in supporting children and young people
Raise the profile of TAs to showcase the value they bring to the sector.

Di stated: "We're really ambitious that the new level 5 specialist teaching assistant apprenticeship actually contributes towards addressing these recommendations."

There are relevant links provided within the presentation. Including the SSTA link https://sstec.online/l5staa/.

If you have any questions regarding this new apprenticeship please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

TA Forum event - Career opportunities

September 2024

Technology in education

Our September 2024 TA forum event focused on technology in education. Yasmin Halverson, lecturer at Suffolk New College, discussed results from Dr Emma Harvey’s PhD thesis on the increase of technology within the early years sector.

Yasmin explained how the data revealed that: "64% said no, that there was no sort of training embedded within their qualification", continuing: "there appears to be a lack of opportunity to increase tech skills through CPD."

Practitioners need to develop ways on how: "technologies can be woven
into the classroom to benefit all areas of learning and development as a tool for multimodal learning."

TA Forum event - Technology in education

June 2024

Supporting children's literacy

Our June 24 TA event on supporting children's literacy skills.

"When you model literacy, it's all about showing that love for literacy, the love of reading. Rhythm for reading was a really cool one that I researched and it's all about improving reading ability by asking the children to and read, but to a rhythm."
Amy Clifton, Tutor assessor at Alpha training, Literacy expert.

TA Forum event - Supporting children's literacy

January 2024

Teaching early brain development

We recently hosted another free, insightful CPD TA event on 25 January 2024 on the topic of early brain development.

We were pleased to be joined by Ella Lloyd Newman, the research lead on the SEEN (Secondary Education around Early Neurodevelopment) programme which focuses on teaching early brain development. Ella has worked on the SEEN project in its pilot phase at the University of Oxford and is now implementing the roll out of the SEEN curriculum to schools nationwide. She has a background in neuroscience and experimental psychology with a focus on neurodevelopment, memory, and mental health, and has also worked in both academic and clinical research at the University of Oxford, University of Bristol and in the NHS. Within the NHS, Ella has worked clinically in maternity services, where she engaged with families about the importance of brain development in the early years.

We were also joined by Miranda Baxter, Deputy Director of Families as part of Campaign for Learning here at NCFE. Miranda shared details around parents as partners in supporting children’s development, as well as sharing some exciting resources that Family for Learning provide.

If you have any other questions regarding this event, please contact:

Janet King, Sector Manager Education and Early Years [email protected]
Angie Rogers, Subject Chair Education and Early Years [email protected]

TA Forum event - Teaching early brain development

October 2023

Watch the October 2023 forum with guest speaker Katy Mitchell from the Ewing Foundation. The focus for this event was inclusion in a teaching and learning environment.

TA Forum October 2023 – Inclusivity in a teaching and learning environment

July 2023

Watch the July 2023 forum with guest speaker Trevor Cotterill, Senior Lecturer in Education and SEND, and Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Special Educational Needs and Disabilities at the University of Derby.

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