ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the rationale for, and process of, a whole-school audit of teaching assistants usage. While it applies mainly to school leaders, there are practical ideas that can be easily adapted by individual teachers to appraise and develop how they use TAs in their own classrooms. It aims to build on the questions raised, and to provide with the tools to conduct an audit of current practice. The examples are based on tools used in our research, the reliability and validity of which have been tested through years of fieldwork. It is important to emphasize that any judgements that may be made on the basis of the audit findings primarily reflect the impact of historic decisions made and actions taken by the school leadership team (SLT) and teaching staff. In the EDTA study we used an audit survey to gather subjective data from teachers and TAs on their perceptions of how they spent their time in the classroom.
