Teaching Assistant Diploma and Autism Awareness Bundle

Teaching Assistant Diploma and Autism Awareness Bundle

This Teaching Assistant Diploma has been developed to enable those working, or hoping to work, in the role of ‘teaching assistant’, to acquire and develop a level of understanding and skills that will help them to do this effectively.

The Teaching Assistant Diploma consists of a number of modules, each of which relate to a particular aspect that is important and relevant to the teaching assistant role. The modules are organised into two groups:

Mandatory modules
•    Provide support for learning activities
•    Support children’s development
•    Help to keep children safe
•    Contribute to positive relationships
•    Provide effective support for your colleagues

There are a number of these to choose from and you must select and complete two of them.  They are:
•    Use information and communication technology to support pupils’ learning
•    Support a child with disabilities or special educational needs
•    Support children and young people’s play
•    Provide displays

You must therefore complete seven modules in total to achieve the Teaching Assistant Diploma.
Each module within the Teaching Assistant Diploma contains a number of sections relating to different aspects of the overall topic with which it is concerned.  Each section of the Teaching Assistant Diploma contains both descriptive text and a range of questions that are designed to test and help you demonstrate your understanding of the material covered.

The starting salary for a Teaching Assistant ranges from around £11,000 to £16,000.  A Higher Level Teaching Assistant could earn up to £18,000 a year.  A fully-qualified FE Teacher can earn between £22,000 and £33,000 a year. - C&Q Qualification Guide 2009.

Autism is a diverse and mystifying condition that has been the focus of much scientific research over the last few decades.  The Autism Awareness Diploma aims to develop your understanding of autism and gives practical suggestions when working with autistic individuals.

Today, autism refers to a whole range of social, language and communication problems.  Severity ranges from hardly there at all, often undiagnosed and even unrecognised, to severe, where it is virtually impossible for people to participate in society.  There are no boundaries between the conditions Kanner and Asperger identified, often people are in-between, whether in between Asperger’s syndrome and Kanner’s, or in between “normal” and Asperger’s syndrome. Therefore, collectively we refer to “autistic spectrum disorder”, or ASD, as this allows for the differences in both symptoms and severity.  A person without ASD is called a neuro-typical.

This course will enable you to become familiar with various approaches to autism, have increased awareness of how to obtain a diagnosis and enable you to understand genetic environmental causes of autism. The Autism Awareness Diploma will also explain how research in other conditions can help research into autism.