Yes to Teaching Assistants, No to Classroom Volunteers

Teaching Assistants have come a long way since 2001 when the General Secretary of the NASUWT teachers union referred to them as ‘pig ignorant peasants.’ Not in pay terms, where they remain an under paid and often exploited workgroup, but in the education profession there is widespread recognition of the value of their role. In a recent UNISON survey ‘all but a few of the respondents justified their use of TA's and some said that they could not run their school without them.’

Putting faith in untested theories

Demos have hardly been the bastions of left leaning politics as the plaything of New Labour but their latest ‘report’ frankly stretches the boundaries of even their restricted credibility. Based on severely limited case studies, with no quantifiable data or proof of claimed ‘efficiencies’ (other than volunteers are ripe for exploitation to cover rabid right-wing cuts in public services) this report promotes the failed right wing ideology that volunteerism can patch up flaking public services. The link to the report is here on the Local Gov website: http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=108544

'Big Society' Volunteering & Job Substitution

As austerity cuts kick in, an article in this week's Economist magazine highlights a rise in the number of volunteers running public services, notably in libraries where 'the number of volunteer librarians has increased by over 70% in five years, to 21,642 in 2011'.
http://www.economist.com/node/
21559939?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/unpaid_armies