Interviewing for a Teaching Assistant

How we can help you

Teaching assistants (also known as learning assistants or education assistants) act as helpers to support teachers and children inside and outside the classroom. It’s not just educational support they give, they also help children with social development. With such an important role, it’s vital that you find the right person for the job. Interview Quizzes can help you with that. We quickly sort out the best candidates, saving you time, effort and money.

Government figures published in June 2020 show that there are 265,167 teaching assistants working in state-funded schools in England alone. That’s more than one for every two teachers. With every school wanting the best employees available, there is a lot of competition. Interview Quizzes can give you that extra edge when you are recruiting.

What to look for in a good teaching assistant

The entry requirements for this role vary. Your school will decide which qualifications and how much experience applicants will need. You will also want to carry out enhanced background checks through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). In addition to those, there are other skills and personality traits which you will want the ideal candidate to have. Here is a list of some of the most important ones:

• Enjoy working with children. Undoubtedly the most important thing in all your employees. Anyone involved in teaching must enjoy being around children.
• Communication. This is an essential skill for teaching assistants. The role entails communicating clearly with both children and adults. A good deal of time will be spent listening to children read, or telling them stories, as well as helping to manage childrens’ behaviour. To do these well, candidates must have the ability to build good working relationships.
• Organisation. A major part of a teaching assistant’s time will be spent preparing the classroom for lessons, helping to plan learning activities, and keeping up to date records. All these require good organisational skills.
• Literacy and numeracy. Your assistants will be helping to teach both of these skills, so it is vital that they are competent with both.
• People management. Related to communication, ideal candidates must be able to manage groups of pupils, whether supervising group activities, or helping with class outings and sports days. They will also be faced with some challenging behaviour, so an ability to remain calm in such situations is essential.
• patience. One of the main aspects of work as a teaching assistant is helping children who need extra support to complete tasks. They will also have to deal with children who are upset or have had accidents, so patience and a good sense of humour will help.
• Adaptable. The working life of a teaching assistant is varied. As well as many of the tasks outlined above, they will be called upon to do a multitude of others, from tidying up after lessons, to inputting data on a database. Flexibility is a key trait for the role.

How to find the best candidates

The skills listed above are essential ones in your prospective employees. So, how can we narrow down the list of applicants to ones who get invited to a job interview? That’s where we come in. Our online quizzes will find people who best match your criteria, and identify which ones would be most suitable for your vacancy. Simply choose four quizzes from our comprehensive list and ask your applicants to take them online. The results will save you having to trawl through a mountain of application forms, thus saving you valuable time. Which quizzes you choose is up to you, but here are some we think might be the most relevant:

English Basic - This is to test how well candidates can communicate with others, in both verbal and written form. Also a measure of their literacy skills.

Maths Basic Numeracy - Teaching assistants do not need to be mathematicians. They do, however, need to be competent in the simpler functions of maths. This quiz will find out if they are.

IQ - A good way to find out who is a fast learner, who can think well under pressure, and who can solve problems quickly.

MS Excel Basic - As with so many jobs nowadays, teaching assistants may be asked to keep records on a database. A grasp of this program will help no end with that.

There are, of course, other quizzes which you may think more appropriate. That’s the beauty of our system – you can tailor it to find whatever you are looking for.

At the Job Interview

Our quizzes will help you to whittle down the field, making your choice of who to invite to an interview that much easier. Good as our quizzes are, there are certain traits that only meeting applicants face to face, and asking interview questions can discover. Unfortunately, we can’t help you with that, but we can get you to that stage much more quickly, and with the minimum effort and expense on your part.

Conclusion

We can't decide who is best for you, but we can provide the tools to help you MAKE BETTER DECISIONS, FASTER.