Want to Improve Schools? Education Assistants Have Ideas

As an education assistant in the Delta School District, every day is a “new adventure” for Debby Kabesh, who typically works across five different classrooms.

In three of those classrooms, Kabesh supports three to four kids, while the other two classrooms have just one or two kids who need her help to learn.

It’s not the rotation of classrooms and number of bright young faces seen on a daily basis that makes the role of an education assistant in a public school difficult, says Kabesh, a 15-year veteran of the job and secretary treasurer for CUPE Local 1091.

“It’s knowing that I can’t give every student the support that they need and deserve,” she said.

The five education assistants in her school are just not enough to cover students’ needs, Kabesh said. “We’re stretched pretty thin.”

This complaint comes not only from education assistants, but also from teachers, school districts, and parents who have reported their children with extra support needs are excluded from school due to EA shortages.

It’s a longstanding problem in B.C., coinciding with an ongoing teacher shortage.

And it’s gaining traction.

Last month the Office of the BC Ombudsperson announced an ongoing investigation into the exclusion of kids from schools, many of whom have disabilities and/or learning support needs — the students education assistants are supposed to help.

Two weeks later, the Representative for Children and Youth released a report calling on the province to, amongst other things, put an education assistant in every classroom.

While the NDP campaigned on a promise to place education assistants in every public kindergarten to Grade 3 classroom last fall, now-Premier David Eby’s ministerial mandate letter for Education Minister Lisa Beare was vague on the topic, instead instructing her to ensure “that teachers and schools have access to additional supports in the classroom and beyond, including the expansion of education assistants.”

In a recent interview, Beare told The Tyee that education assistants “are instrumental in the collective efforts to increase our equity of education and our access, and really for the outcomes of students.”

The Tyee interviewed Kabesh and two other education assistants, all represented by CUPE local unions, to find out what they would like to see change to improve their working conditions and consequently improve students’ learning conditions.

Part-time, not full-time, hours

Education assistants’ work hours don’t typically include time outside of class hours to collaborate with teachers or attend meetings with the parents of the kids they work with.

“There’s an awful lot of support in schools that goes on behind the scenes, but education assistants are not part of that because there’s no funding for those hours,” said Selena Laing, an education assistant in Prince George with seven years of experience.

“We miss key meetings and information, and times that we could contribute.”

In Damien Arden’s Campbell River district, education assistants receive 30 minutes paid time per month to attend staff meetings. But those meetings are only relevant for teachers and school administrators, said Arden, an education assistant with 10 years of experience who also serves as the Indigenous shop steward for CUPE Local 723.

“It would be nice to see a once-a-month education assistant staff meeting,” Arden said.

The number of hours worked per week and the hourly pay for education assistants varies from district to district.

Kabesh works 26 hours per week, starting when the school bell rings in the morning and finishing at the final bell of the day.

The hourly pay in Delta is decent, Kabesh said. But the number of hours of work makes the job unaffordable for many.

“Some education assistants are working two or three jobs just to get by,” she said.

Education Minister Lisa Beare said many districts are implementing before- and after-school child-care programs that could lengthen an education assistant’s workday.

“We hear from education assistants ourselves that not having full-time hours in the week really prevents them from potentially staying in a job that they love,” Beare said.

Kabesh agrees, noting the Delta school district is running a “seamless day child care” pilot program with before- and after-school care in some schools right now.

Making a living wage in a full-time job would mean going home at the end of the workday with more peace of mind, Arden told The Tyee, and education assistants wouldn’t have to go on employment insurance during the summer break.

Beare noted this is a bargaining year for the education sector, and that some of education assistants’ issues could be addressed during contract negotiations.

When students are not fully supported, it leads to violence

In previous assignments with a “very high needs” student, Laing worked part of the day with the student before another education assistant relieved her for the rest of the day, to ensure they both had breaks.

“I do tend to gravitate towards assignments with students who like to express themselves physically, or even in some verbally exciting ways. That’s a preference for me, that’s where my skillset is,” said Laing.

It is not uncommon for education assistants, referred to by WorkSafeBC as teaching assistants, to experience violence on the job.

According to WorkSafeBC’s data on violence on the job, which doesn’t specify who was responsible for the violence, elementary and secondary teaching assistants made 2,120 reports from 2014 to 2023, compared to 453 reports from teachers during that period.

Teaching assistants represented the fourth highest number of violence reports by industry, behind only nurses, nursing aids and social work employees.

While the number of WorkSafeBC reports dropped in 2020, the same year in-school education was severely curtailed by the pandemic, education assistants’ reports steadily increased to 369 reports in 2023, from 143 in 2020.

Kabesh believes this violence emerges from a combination of increasing numbers of kids with learning needs, and some students’ frustrations with the level of support they receive — or don’t — in class.

Kabesh shares an example: she sets an alarm to know when she has to go to the next classroom, and often sees her students “deflate” when it goes off.

“Their shoulders drop, they sigh, and I feel like I spend all day apologizing and saying, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go,’” she said. “Sometimes that leads to them shutting down and doing nothing, or acting out and being disruptive. And that affects everybody in the class.”

Violence can also be related to education assistants not knowing how to advocate for themselves or their students, Laing says. It’s a skill Laing says she’s had to foster on her own.

Whether or not Laing has the space to flex that skillset is dependent on how supportive the school’s administrators are, she adds.

“I worked with a student who displayed very aggressive behaviours almost daily for two years straight, and I never ever felt like I needed a break from him,” Laing said, attributing this to the support she received from administrators and other staff.

Now, her school doesn’t have enough support staff, or resource teachers for students with additional needs, and that means Laing is no longer able to work with physically aggressive students.

Sometimes, Laing says, parents are unwilling or unable to work with the school when their child gets violent. But she believes parents are usually doing their best, and that supporting students is a group effort.

The per-student funding formula for kids with diagnosed disabilities also puts kids with behavioural issues at a disadvantage, Arden notes. Unlike autism, for example, a behavioural issues diagnosis does not come with additional funding.

“Seeing more funding for behaviour-based intervention with children from kindergarten to Grade 12 would be amazing,” he said. “Especially in their early years. Early intervention with everything is key.”

BC-wide education and training standards

Consistent crisis prevention and intervention training for education assistants can also help reduce violent incidents, Kabesh says.

“A well-trained education assistant has the understanding of the reason behind the behaviours,” she said. “And has the skillset to calm those behaviours down and diffuse those difficult situations before they become violent.”

The education ministry is currently working on a competency framework for education assistant training programs in provincial post-secondaries, Minister Beare says.

“It’s part of the K-12 workforce plan that the ministry is developing, and we’re doing it in partnership with education partners like education assistants,” she said.

“Having those training standards and really making sure that training is more consistent across the province, is something we absolutely agree with,” Beare added.

The framework is currently voluntary, and there are no mandatory provincial education or training standards for education assistants in British Columbia.

This means an assistant’s training and skillset varies from district to district, and sometimes from school to school.

In Laing’s district, some education assistants have been hired without training or school-related job experience, she said.

“That’s manageable as long as we provide the training immediately,” Laing said.

“Unfortunately, that’s not where we’re at. We bring people in and we need them so badly that they start the very next day.”

Before COVID-19, there were some education assistant training opportunities on professional development days in Prince George, Laing said. But since then almost all the professional development conference offerings in her district have been aimed at teachers.

“More education assistant training would be incredible,” she said.

An education assistant in every class

In her ideal education setting, Kabesh says there would be an education assistant in every classroom. Not only for the benefit of the kids who have been assigned an education assistant, but for everyone.

“Everybody in the class needs assistance at some time,” she said.

But every student that needed one-on-one support from an education assistant would have that, too.

“To spend time to build relationships with the students, and to be able to assist them in learning how to deal with the frustrations that come up in everyday life,” Kabesh said.

“This is the part I love most about it — I love building these connections — seeing the pride in themselves when they’ve realized they’ve accomplished something that they thought they couldn’t do.”

Laing agrees, adding she loves giving kids the tools to advocate for their needs and be as independent as possible. But that takes time.

“Without that time with students, we’re really not creating any opportunities for that kind of growth and independence,” she said.

Arden would like to see mandatory incident reporting whenever a student is physically aggressive with an education assistant, no matter how small it may seem.

Administrators should check in regularly with their education assistants and other support staff, too, he says, to ensure school and district leadership know what’s happening in schools.

“Education assistants are run off their feet,” he said, so they don’t always file incident reports. “If that’s the case and it continues that way, how is it ever going to get better?”