Miliband promotes new support staff qualification

Friday, 28 May 2004 12:00 AM

The School Standards Minister has welcomed the launch of a new national qualification for school support staff.

The vocational qualification, which is yet to be formally named, is designed to allow support staff to "demonstrate their competence and professionalism."

David Miliband said: "There are more than a quarter of a million people who do fantastic work in schools, directly or indirectly supporting teachers.

"They hold a wide range of very responsible jobs, and they are vital to maintaining and raising school standards.

"Until now many have not had much training, nor been able to achieve qualifications relevant to their work in schools.

"This new, flexible qualification will be tailored to the work which school staff do - whether directly with children, or indirectly in one of many professional back-up roles."

A spokesman for the Education Department, told Politics.co.uk that the new qualification would draw some modules from the existing Teaching Assistant NVQ.

It will also give staff the opportunity to gain credit for a variety of skills, such as IT or maintenance, which they may not have suffcient in depth knowledge of to be awarded a specific NVQ.

Increasing the number of classroom assistants and support staff in schools is key to the Government's plans to cut teachers workload.

The recent working time agreement aimed to cut teachers' hours and workloads by turning over routine and administrative work to classroom staff.

The agreement was boycotted by the biggest teaching union the NUT who claimed it would dilute teaching standards and lead to unqualified individuals being in charge of classes.

This new vocational qualification is expected to be introduced this summer.

Training and assessment will be school based and jointly run by the Learning and Skills Council and the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency.

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