The EEF’s newly updated guidance on the deployment of teaching assistants offers five recommendations for their effective deployment. The EEF’s guidance has shaped how we have deployed teaching assistants at our small, rural primary school, offering us a chance to reflect on this essential part of our workforce. Were we adhering to best practice according to the evidence? What were the challenges and what were the enablers to ensure our teaching assistants were effectively deployed and how did this fit with our pupil premium strategy? This last point was at the heart of our reflections, after all, our brilliant TAs are often working with some of our most disadvantaged learners.
Using the guidance to support evidence-based interventions
Focusing on recommendation three we considered our practice related to the deployment of TAs to deliver well-chosen, evidence-based, structured interventions:
‘Evidence indicates that one way for TAs to supplement - but not replace – the teacher is through delivering high-quality structured interventions. Deploying TAs to deliver structured interventions can support pupils in targeted ways and allow them to build on or better engage in what is being taught in the classroom.’ – (EEF,2025)
Framing this guidance around our approach to structured interventions was a useful reflection process. We provide structured interventions to support literacy from the early years -Neli – through to Year 6.
In Key Stage One, an area of support comes through the intervention Abracadabra (Abra). Abra is a carefully structured, evidence-based programme. The purpose of the intervention is to support children in Key Stage One to develop literacy skills through decoding, fluency and comprehension activities built around a series of age-appropriate texts. A key question for us was: who are these pupils and would this intervention attend to their needs?
Thankfully the guidance offers us a list of questions to help structure our thinking.
Before the intervention was introduced, a thorough assessment was carried out to identify the specific needs of the children. Once in place, we were mindful that the intervention needed to be carefully monitored to ensure it was being implemented with fidelity. Teachers would need to maintain clear oversight of all aspects of the intervention, to ensure consistency of delivery.
Abra in Practice
Having ensured appropriate training for our teaching assistants – including sustained professional development to ensure fidelity to the programme – we created video evidence to support any potential Teaching Assistants we needed to train in the future to ensure we were developing a structured support programme of professional development.
We developed this into a short clip for the Research School Network’s ‘Clips from the classroom’. This can be watched below:
To further support the professional development, we developed a number of reflective questions to structure thinking as the clip is watched:
Questions for reflection
How does the intervention support the needs of all the children?
How does the teaching assistant adapt the sessions to address the sounds the children need to revisit?
How might the structured approach, incorporating vocabulary and reading fluency, be particularly beneficial to disadvantaged students?
Getting the most from our Teaching Assistants
We know our TAs work with some of the most disadvantaged children to support their progress and the updated guidance from the EEF provides a series of recommendations to help support our thinking about their effective deployment. Ensuring our approach to interventions is evidence-based, structured and supported by effective professional development is key to that effective deployment.
