It’s a challenging landscape for schools seeking to train and recruit new teachers.
That’s the result of a combination of factors, including the perception that teaching can be a hostile working environment and that the financial rewards are better in other sectors.
But get people past their initial hesitance and give them the chance to immerse themselves in the classroom and those perceptions will be challenged – and change.
That’s why we at Warrington Primary Academy Trust (WPAT), which includes eight primaries and a teaching hub, began to develop an additional route for those interested in teaching but weren’t sure whether to fully commit.
We’ve called it TAs into Teaching, which pretty much spells out exactly what it does. The aim is to give these would-be teachers a ‘try before you buy’ route into teaching, offering them a teaching assistant role in one of our trust schools for 12 to 18 months. It is designed to give participants an understanding of the classroom teacher’s role and how teaching assistants work with teachers.