Will the Cabinet Secretary explain why teaching assistants are paid for only 9 months of the year?
Teaching assistants are a highly valued part of our education workforce. Most are employed by local authorities or schools on standardised term-time contracts, with pay calculated on a pro-rata basis for the weeks they work and divided evenly across 12 months to provide consistency. Teaching assistants’ pay and conditions are the responsibility of individual employers, whether this is the school or the local authority.
As I outlined in my Written Statement on 3 September, one of my key priorities as we continue to develop the Strategic Education Workforce Plan will be to work with our social partners and stakeholders to agree how we will take forward my commitment to improve pay and conditions for our support staff. My aim is to publish the plan during the spring term.