Today the Ofsted launched the Annual Report for 2012 / 13.

You can read the media coverage of this on various websites including the BBC website and the Education Guardian.

You can download the report itself from the OFSTED website. As university students you will be drawn to the primary source, the report itself. It is interesting for you to then compare this to the media interpretations.

It is interesting to note that the report mentions teaching assistants several times. Once on p13 in the section about teaching: here it discusses the need for ‘high performing leaders of teaching’ who could inspire a ‘high degree of consistency in the quality of teaching across the school’ and the need for all staff including teaching assistants (and midday assistants) to be ‘trained to have the same high standards and to challenge pupils to do better.’ Later, on p15 and p16 teaching assistants are identified as making contributions in the examples of outstanding teaching: one in a Year 3 lesson, using her skills as an Italian speaker to support pronunciation and several in a year 6 science lesson who reinforce and extend pupils’ learning by supporting them in making predictions and asking questions.