Schools across the borough are set to benefit from incoming teaching assistants in a bid to address a skills shortage in the sector.

Bower Park Academy in Collier Row, Hall Mead School in Upminster and Hacton Primary School in Hornchurch will take in staff through the Empower Learning Academy Trust (ELAT) apprenticeship scheme this month.

ELAT, which runs the Havering schools, will train the teaching assistants who were picked after an assessment which included work with special educational needs (SEN) children.

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The scheme aims to help tackle the sector's shortage where nine percent of the teaching workforce resigned from state schools last year, according to the Department for Education (DfE).

Andrew Frater, chief operating officer at ELAT, said: "This is an innovative way to address the challenge of recruiting more teaching assistants."

ELAT has been partnership with employment agency Randstad to find and train the teaching assistants.

The first cohort will be inducted this month, ELAT said, and the apprenticeships, developed by the DfE in 2022, are open to anyone over the age of 16.