Thank you for signing our petition. So far, we are delighted to update that we have 38,000 signatures. Mathew ~ As higher level teaching assistant at an Academy in England said: "There needs to be more guidance on what are reasonable duties for support staff to undertake. I gave up teaching but because I'm qualified I'm under pressure to do a teacher's job on support staff pay." Sam ~ A teaching assistant (TA) in a primary school in England said: The biggest issue currently facing me and my colleagues is workload. We are constantly given more things to do such as interventions, phonics groups and cover supervision with very little time allowed for us to adequately prepare for these sessions. When we do have time allotted to us we can be pulled away to do other things. This is on top of the day to day jobs in the classroom that have to be done. I know a lot of TAs who take work home with them to do at the weekend. Sanferon ~ Support staff are taking on more and more work and dealing with the most challenging students without any financial incentive or proper training. We are severely under-valued and often excluded from 'whole school' events. Is your school based support staff are over worked like other support staff? What are you doing about this? Have you consulted your Trade union? Would you be willing to email and ask five (or more if you like) of your friends or work colleagues to support our campaign? It would massively increase the number of signatures. This in turn would help us present a stronger case for OUR Teaching Assistants (Support Staff) Locally and Nationally. We want to make our campaign as big as possible. Can you take a moment to post about it on Facebook and twitter? Thanks again, we really appreciate your support. Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.—Henry Ford Pmak