The impact of support staff on pupils' 'positive approaches to learning' and their academic progress

Peter Blatchford*, Paul Bassett, Penelope Brown, Clare Martin, Anthony Russell, Rob Webster

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In recent years there has been an unprecedented increase in support staff in schools in England and Wales. There were widespread expectations that this will be of benefit to teachers and pupils but there has been little systematic research to address the impact of support staff. This study used a naturalistic longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between the amount of support (measured by teacher estimates and systematic observation) and pupils' 'Positive Approaches to Learning' (PAL) and academic progress. There were over 8000 pupils across two cohorts and seven age groups. Results on PAL were not straightforward by there was a consistent trend for those with most support to make less academic progress than similar pupils with less support, and this was not explained by characteristics of the pupils such as piror attainment or level of special educational need.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)443-464
Number of pages22
JournalBritish Educational Research Journal
Volume37
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2011

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The impact of support staff on pupils' 'positive approaches to learning' and their academic progress'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this