ESL teacher aides belong to the cohort of social services employees whose applications for pay claims have been curtailed by the recent Equal Pay Act. As most teacher-aides are women, they have little comparison with men to gauge their work status. They are often on contract pay, dependent on income from ESL student funding, and within school hierarchies have tenuous job security.

However, teacher aides (TAs) carry out significant functions in schools. Within classrooms, they support migrants, refugees and international students, by rewording teacher instructions and content to avoid student misalignment. With TA help, student academic results can be encouraged and boosted, as in a North Island study when an international student became Dux Litteratum (McCarthy, 2020). Multilingual TAs can transfer information into students’ first language as well as their second, facilitating content and linguistic transfer (Siilata & Barkuizen, 2004). TAs also provide invaluable social, emotional and cross-cultural support for the students they are allocated to, particularly when newcomers. They can give invaluable advice to students in navigating educational structures and social networks, whether it is to approach a teacher, counsellor or administrator. Their work is a fine balance between listening and guiding and encouraging student resilience.

TAs help students navigate through a variety of student communication problems such as learning to understand teacher accents, listen and copy at a teacher’s vocal pace, or understand teachers’ writing. Students can feel swamped by large classes, and appreciate smaller one-to-one help, especially in the early stages. New ESL students can find large class discussion difficult, have to practise approach teachers verbally, and often need to cope with failing often for the first time in their lives.

TAs' relationships with mainstream teachers needs to be carefully negotiated between helping the teacher communicate with the student and vice versa. Mainstream teachers could perceive that TAs as having limited ability to speak English, as well as limited knowledge of English and other specialist subjects. If TAs do have specialised knowledge in a subject, they need to carefully watch their role and input boundaries to avoid resentment from staff or students (Stacey, Harvey, & Richards, 2013).

The role of TAs can be a stepping stone for adult migrant women, particularly those with multiple languages. They might become TAs initially but once used to the New Zealand language and school system, they can become teachers and take on positions of responsibility within the wider school.

The Equal Pay Act (see announcement by Hon Brooke Van Velden, 6 May 2025) has not only curtailed the opportunity of TAs to increase their pay over time but increased the likelihood of women avoiding the role, so that in turn, school systems, mainstream teachers, and ESL students overall are damaged by the lack of government support.

References

• McCarthy, G. A. (2020). Responses to linguistic and cultural diversity in New Zealand state secondary schools: A qualitative study. (Doctoral thesis, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand), Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10179/15371
• Siilata, R., & Barkuizen, G. (2004). Pasifika students' perceptions of their L1 maintenance at home and school: Language to climb a coconut tree. The TESOL Journal, 12, 22-38.
• Stacey, K., Harvey, S., & Richards, H. (2013). Teachers working with ESOL paraprofessionals in a secondary context: Examining supervision. Teaching and Teacher Education, 36, 55-67. DOI: 10.1016/j.tate.2013.07.002