Empowering learning support assistants to enhance the emotional wellbeing of children in school

Abstract

This article is practice based in that its main emphasis is on how psychological theory into behavioural, emotional and social development can be used to empower learning support assistants (LSAs) to increase children’s skills in the area of emotional literacy. For the past two decades, since the introduction of a national curriculum, the educational focus in the United Kingdom has been principally on raising academic attainment within schools. Yet in recent years there has been a growing appreciation by Government that to raise standards it is not sufficient to focus solely upon the content of the curriculum and the way in which it is delivered. Schools need to be concerned with the all round development of children and young people, as shown by the introduction of the Every Child Matters (2005) programme with its broader and enduring outcome measures. This paper describes how an educational psychology service has developed training and support that aims to increase the success of pupils by empowering LSAs to address pupils’ emotional needs. It explores the rationale for investing significant time and effort into such work and describes how a small pilot project has been extended to become a county-wide initiative across primary and secondary phases of education. Consideration is given to the partnership with schools and the practical aspects to be considered in an initiative of this kind. Early evaluation results are reported and areas for development are considered, including further in-depth evaluation of individual outcomes for pupils.