Nominate your talented TAs to become qualified teachers

In many schools, the summer term often means a reshuffle of both teaching and non-teaching staff and so begins the search for fresh talent. Whilst some roles are best filled by hiring someone new, schools are increasingly looking toward their existing school staff to train up and develop into qualified teachers.

There is plenty of appetite amongst HLTAs, TAs and other support staff too, with a survey of them finding 30% already had a degree and the desire to become a qualified teacher. There are many benefits of developing your existing staff over recruiting externally too; not only can it be more cost effective, it is also a great way to invest in your staff and ultimately when one of your teaching assistants say they’d like to train as a teacher, they really mean it. They’ve seen the job intimately over the course of many years and they know exactly what they’re signing up for.

Nominate your talented TAs

More than 1,400 schools have used our Straight to Teaching programme to grow their own teachers and since 2017 we have qualified over 2,000. Straight to Teaching acts as a professional development programme, with each one tailored to the staff and their existing teaching experience. It provides a structured, tutor-supported pathway that over a period of terms will prepare them for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) assessment via the Assessment Only route.

And with our new nomination form, it’s now become even easier for you to start your staff on their QTS journey and build the programme into your workforce planning. The nomination form fast-tracks your TAs to our Straight to Teaching application form, where they can provide more detail about their teaching experience and in turn get an estimate from our team as to how long their programme may be.

We would of course recommend discussing the programme with your staff before nominating them and our advisors are on hand to provide any help along the way on 0203 194 3200 or email institute@tesglobal.com.