Yesterday (September 14th) on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme there was an item about the importance of teaching assistants.
You can hear it at this link:
Clip from Today 14 Sept – scroll across until you get to 2:48:30 to hear the discussion; this is available for 28 days.
There are number of interesting points made by Sir Kevan Collins, the Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation and Ross McMullen, a former headteacher.