You have to remember that only 20/30 years ago any student with mental illness, disability or behaviour problems were put away in institutions. So it is pretty new to have TA's and Gove does not understand this and never will because he hasn't done it. I was a TA and a Teacher in the UK before I moved to Oz. Without TA's you will find less teaching happening because even when you walk into a classroom and you have a TA tidying up the classroom while the kids sit down and listen to the teacher doesn't mean they aren't educating the students because if it wasn't the TA doing it then the teacher would be and the kids would have to be doing something that didn't require much supervision (depends on age of kids but that doesn't happen lol).
I was a Special School Support Assistant and on paper it looks like our class was over staffed 1 Teacher, 1 HTLA, 4 SSSA's and 8 kids, however according to the statements we were understaffed and we felt it. We had 6 students who would 'kick off' and it most of the students took at least 2 members of staff or up to 5 to calm them down which meant very few left with the other students. Gove is looking at what it looks like on paper and on paper it does look like there are too many TA's in schools. But behaviour has deteriorated and that isn't due to teaching it is due to society so unless he has plans on changing society then he will have to deal with the amounts of TA's in schools.
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