Teaching Assistant Job Description

Key skills

Responsibilities

• • Support individuals and small groups during lessons under the direction of the class teacher
• • Reinforce and clarify the teacher's explanation for students who need it, without doing the work for them
• • Deliberately reduce prompting over time so students become more independent
• • Prepare resources, equipment, and adapted materials before lessons
• • Observe how students respond and feed that back to the teacher so planning can change
• • Supervise students at breaks, during transitions, and on visits as required
• • Apply the class behaviour approach consistently and support students who are dysregulated
• • Assist with classroom routines, records, and displays as directed

Requirements

• • Whatever qualification or clearance applies to classroom support staff where your school sits - some jurisdictions require a specific certificate or registration and others do not, and the rules change, so confirm the current position with the relevant education authority
• • Secure literacy and numeracy at the level needed to support the age group taught
• • Genuine willingness to work to another person's plan rather than substituting your own
• • Patience and consistency with students who are struggling, distracted, or upset
• • Reliability across the pattern you need, since a class plans around the assistant being present
• • Clearance under the safeguarding, background, and suitability checks required for staff working with children in your jurisdiction

Nice to have

• • Experience with the age group and phase you are recruiting for
• • Training in a specific literacy, numeracy, or communication intervention your school delivers
• • Experience supporting students with additional needs, particularly one to one
• • A second language spoken by students in your school
• • First aid certification at the level your setting expects
• • Willingness to support clubs, visits, or lunchtime provision beyond classroom hours

Hire for fading, not for helpfulness

The instinct that makes someone want this job, wanting to help a struggling child, is also the instinct that produces over-support. Ask directly: 'A student you support can do the first two questions alone but always asks you for help on the third. What do you do over the next few weeks?' The answer you want involves waiting longer before intervening, prompting less specifically each time, and having a plan to step back entirely. Candidates who describe sitting alongside the child indefinitely mean well but will make that student more dependent, not less.

Observe them with children before you decide

Where your setting and local rules permit a supervised visit, this is by far the most informative stage. Watch whether they crouch to the child's level, whether they wait after asking a question or fill the silence themselves, whether they praise the effort or the answer, and how they respond to a child who refuses. None of that is visible in an interview. Confirm what a candidate who is not yet employed and not yet cleared may do on site, because supervision requirements for visitors around children vary by jurisdiction.

Define the boundary with the teacher explicitly

Most difficulties in this role trace to an undefined relationship rather than to capability. Write down who plans, who adapts, who decides when a child needs a break, how the assistant feeds back, and when there is time for that feedback to happen. Then brief both people together in the first week. Assistants who are handed a child and no information invent their own approach, which then diverges from the teacher's, and the child receives two inconsistent versions of the same lesson.

Where to source Teaching Assistants

Parents of children at the school, people returning to work after raising a family, and candidates from childcare, youth work, or coaching backgrounds are the largest and most reliable pools, and term-time hours make the role genuinely attractive to them. Prospective teachers using the role to gain classroom experience are excellent but usually short-term, so plan for that rather than being surprised. Local community channels and the school's own parent network typically outperform national job boards, because most candidates want a role close to home.

Process a high-volume, seasonal hire efficiently

Assistant vacancies attract many applications, cluster around the start of the academic year, and involve safeguarding checks that take real time. Screen with a short structured set of questions rather than reading every application in full, and start checks as soon as an offer is accepted. Pitch N Hire's ATS lets you run one posting across several vacancies, apply consistent screening, and keep strong runners-up on file, which matters because schools frequently need another assistant within the same term.