Sector Qualification Strategy for School Support Staff - UCET ...

Educating the UK’s Educators
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SECTOR QUALIFICATION STRATEGY FOR SCHOOL SUPPORT STAFF
UCET response to TDA consultation
1. UCET welcomes the opportunity to comment on the TDA consultation on
its Sector Qualification Strategy for school support staff. It is an extremely
important document, for it reflects a commitment to ensuring that the whole
school workforce, not only teachers, requires to be properly equipped to
perform the tasks expected of them. As public and political expectations of the
education service are raised, so more is demanded of teachers. They in turn
depend for their effectiveness on multiple forms of support. An education
service that aspires to be world-class, needs world-class teachers; and worldclass
teachers cannot deliver unless the specialist and other forms of support
staff are highly trained for the roles they have to perform.
2. In UCET’s view, the Sector Qualifications Strategy is an impressive
document, given the complexity and scale of the undertaking. It provides a
convincing rationale for a wide range of school support staff, demonstrating
how a succession of government initiatives and other changes have created
the need to ensure that all schools are provided with support staff who fully
understand the roles they are expected to play and have the skills and
understandings necessary to do so. The strategy undertakes an analysis of the
support staff workforce, and of the array of qualifications available for them,
the extent of take-up, and the changes in provision that are required if schools
and their teachers are to address the challenges ahead.
3. UCET is in agreement with the evidence that is adduced at paragraph 4.2.3
and with the proposals that derive from that evidence that will enable the TDA
to achieve its strategic objective through the establishment of a new
competency-based qualifications framework for school support staff. The
detailed elaboration of that framework in Section 6 of the paper is perceptive
and comprehensive.
4. The consultation paper makes reference to the contribution which higher
education can make with regard to a framework of Foundation Degrees and
in other ways. Currently, many UCET institutions are involved in offering such
degrees and in some cases these are incorporated into a structure of course
provision that encourages career progression. There is no reason why such
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provision cannot be made compatible with the Integrated Qualifications
Framework which is intended to cover all who work with children.
5. The accompanying document, the TDA SQS Action Plan, strikes us as a
rationale way of implementing the strategy, with due attention to the risks
that have been identified.
Gordon Kirk,
Academic Secretary 18 th January, 2009.