How to Become a Teaching Assistant: A London Recruiter's Honest Guide

# How to Become a Teaching Assistant: A London Recruiter's Honest Guide

Every week, someone asks me a version of the same question: "How do I become a teaching assistant if I don't have the qualifications or a degree?" It usually comes with a note of worry, as though there's a locked door somewhere and everyone else has the key.

After more than a decade placing teaching assistants across London schools, I can tell you the honest answer isn't the one most people expect. The qualifications aren't the barrier. The real work is something quite different, and understanding it early will save you a great deal of time, money and second-guessing.

The biggest myth: "I need qualifications or a degree"

The most common misconception I meet is the belief that you must hold formal qualifications, a degree, or a childcare credential to work as a teaching assistant. Candidates arrive convinced they're unqualified before they've even started.

In reality, those things are favourable, not compulsory. They can help you stand out, and for some specialist roles they carry weight, but they are rarely the deciding factor for an entry-level position. Plenty of people I've placed began with none of them.

So if qualifications aren't the gatekeeper, what is? In a word: experience.

What actually gets you in

Schools want candidates who have spent real time around children, and as a recruiter I look for exactly the same thing. It's the single most useful thing you can offer, and it does far more for you than any line on a CV.

Here's the part that rarely gets said out loud. Experience doesn't only reassure the school — it benefits 'you' just as much. Spending real time with children, even briefly, tells you very quickly whether this is genuinely the right path, ideally before you commit years to further study or training in a direction that may not suit you.

I've come across graduates who studied for three or four years, sometimes trialling in a classroom only after finishing their degree, and then turned their entire career direction around within weeks of starting. It's a sad thing to see. Had they gained even a little classroom exposure earlier, they might have reached that realisation years sooner, and made very different decisions with far less at stake.

That's why "get some experience first" isn't a hurdle schools put in your way. It's advice that works in your favour.

How to get experience when you have none

This is the question that trips people up, so let me be practical about it.

Volunteer in a local school. Approach the schools around you directly and ask whether they have any volunteering posts. If you have a family member who attends a local school, even better — ask the senior leadership team whether they have anything available, and explain that you're interested in pursuing a career in education.

Be clear about your intentions from the start. Say plainly that you want to build experience, and that if a paid role comes up you'd like to be considered for it. Schools respond well to honesty and ambition, and being on-site when a vacancy appears puts you in a strong position.

Give it real time. I'd typically suggest around six months of consistent volunteering. That's long enough to build genuine skill, gather references, and show commitment rather than curiosity.

Use transferable experience. Volunteering isn't the only route. If you've worked as a nanny, tutored, or supported children in any capacity that involves educating and caring for them, you already have transferable skills. Draw on whatever you have.

Passion matters — but it has to point the right way

When I meet a candidate the role genuinely suits, it shows. They talk about how the children are progressing, and how they themselves are progressing too. They seem connected to what they do, and they're excited about the training a school offers them. That enthusiasm for their own development is one of the clearest signs I've found that someone will thrive.

But passion on its own isn't the whole story, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. A passionate person in the wrong school — an environment that doesn't share their values or philosophy — can end up frustrated. Worse, they can conclude that one difficult experience represents the whole profession, thinking every school must be the same.

It usually isn't. Every school is different, and it often takes the chance to work in more than one setting before a candidate finds where their values genuinely align. So if your first experience feels wrong, don't assume the career is wrong. It may simply be the fit.

How to tell whether a school is right for you

When you're new, you're at a disadvantage here: you don't have previous experience to measure a school against. I won't pretend you do.

What you do have is your intuition, and I'd strongly encourage you to trust it. On a visit, interview or trial day, pay attention to a few things. How did the staff treat you — were they welcoming? Can you picture yourself working there? And crucially, will you be supported: is there on-the-job training, or a chance to be put on a course?

Signs that a school invests in its people are among the best indicators that you'll be looked after and given room to grow.

Writing a CV that actually gets you noticed

Once you have some experience, the way you describe it makes an enormous difference. This is where candidates most often let themselves down.

Don't just list duties. Break down what your support actually looked like, child by child. Explain what you did, who you supported, and what the support involved.

The difference is stark. Compare these two lines:

Weak: "Teaching assistant, supporting the children, completing work." Strong: "Teaching assistant supporting a mixed-ability Year 6 class, including exam preparation, and running small intervention groups in maths and English."

The first tells a headteacher nothing. The second lets them picture exactly what you did — the year group, the ability range, the exam-prep context, the specific interventions. That specificity is what earns interviews.

There's one more thing worth including. If you have personal experience relevant to the role, put it on your CV, your covering letter, or both. I've found that schools recruiting for SEN teaching assistant roles will often favour someone with genuine personal experience of neurodivergence. In most cases that lived understanding runs deeper — you grasp what the child may be experiencing and what they need in a way that's hard to teach.

The next hurdle

Getting the interview and trial day right is a subject in itself — how to show initiative, how to handle a child who won't engage, and what senior leadership quietly watch for on the day. That deserves its own article, and it's one I'll cover next.

The honest conclusion

So, how do you become a teaching assistant? Not by chasing qualifications you were told you needed, but by getting real experience with children — through volunteering, transferable roles, or both — and being clear from the outset about where you want to go.

That experience works in your favour twice over. It gets you hired, and it tells you, early and honestly, whether this is the right path for you. Combine it with genuine passion pointed at the right school, and a CV that shows exactly what you've done, and you're far closer to that classroom than you might think.

And here's the flip side of getting experience first. The moment you know that working as a teaching assistant is genuinely for you, start upskilling as soon as you can. Much of it costs nothing — reading around the specific role you're doing, exploring different teaching approaches and methods, and making the most of the resources already around you. Once you're certain of the direction, further study, courses and university become a fantastic opportunity rather than a gamble, and they open the door to progression into a higher-level teaching assistant role, or into teaching itself if that's your goal. And if being an excellent TA is your ambition in its own right, both now and for the long term, then investing in your own development, even with your own resources, is just as worthwhile.

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If you are considering a career in education or exploring your next opportunity, NL Education works with schools across London and can provide guidance on current vacancies. Get in touch and upload your CV at nl-education.co.uk/contact, or email us at info@nl-education.co.uk