ABSTRACT
The research evidence is clear that, compared with teachers, TAs spend much more time working with pupils in groups. Observations in primary schools conducted as part of the DISS project showed that TAs spent 41 per cent of their time working with small groups (groups of between two and five pupils) and 21 per cent working with medium-sized groups (six to ten pupils). The proportion of time TAs in secondary schools spent working with small and medium groups was 17 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively. Teachers in both settings, on the other hand, spent 8 per cent of their time working with (mainly small) groups (Blatchford, Russell and Webster, 2012). A similar situation was found in the Making a Statement study: observations in primary classrooms showed that TAs worked with small groups 50 per cent more often than teachers (Webster and Blatchford, 2013).
