National Standards

Jo Vaughan   Invercargill

While at a literacy course today I had a discussion with 2 Teacher Aides and the facilitator about how national standards may affect Teacher Aides.  The Teacher Aides felt that we would have an increased work load as more children would be identified to be 'brought up to speed'.  Teachers would be more stressed due to increased work load and that this stress would 'flow' into the classromm which would then mean more stress put onto Teacher Aides.  From the facilitator - Teacher Aides need to have job discriptions or they may end up working with children and have an increased work load that is not in their job discription.  Teacher Aides may end up doing 'better' work.  By that, it was meant that the children identified as being well below the standards (the children we tend to work with now) may be picked up by the teachers and Teacher Aides may end up working with the children that are just below the standards and will easily be up to speed after a short time of one-on-one.