Breakdown of pupil support assistants in 2017: FOI release

Processing and quality assurance of the statistics on school support staff for 2017 has been brought into line with procedures for National Statistics on pupils and teachers. These procedures have improved the accuracy, reliability, coherence and comparability of the statistics. In particular, there is now greater standardisation of terms and definitions between schools and local authorities. There has also been a review of support staff categories in consultation with local authority education representatives and Scottish Government officials with responsibility for support and wellbeing in schools. This resulted in a new category termed “Pupil support assistant”. This category combines the previous “Additional support needs auxiliary or care assistant” and “Classroom assistant” categories and better reflects policy and provision in schools. This additional quality assurance work on the 2017 data means that the statistics are not directly comparable with previous years.

The breakdown you requested is included in the spreadsheet below.  The additional quality assurance carried out on this data suggests that in some local authorities the distinction between these categories is arbitrary.  The total figure for pupil support assistants is a much more reliable indicator of the number of staff supporting pupils in the classroom.