The Datum Report

Occupation 6113 · Caring, leisure and other service occupations

Educational support assistants

Half of full-time educational support assistants in the UK earn more than £21,448 a year, and half earn less.

Educational support assistants work with teachers to provide one-to-one support for children with particular learning needs.

How people enter it

Academic qualifications may be required by some employers, although entry is possible with relevant experience alone. A DBS check is mandatory.

What the work involves

• supports schoolwork under teacher’s supervision
• helps child understand instruction through a variety of means and encourages self-confidence and independence
• identifies signs of distress and offers reassurance
• implements care programmes, as appropriate
• helps and encourages child to communicate
• attends to child’s physical needs
• provides feedback to teachers and completes and maintains records

Also called

Education support assistant · Learning support assistant · Non-teaching assistant (schools) · Special needs assistant · Support assistant (educational establishments)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for educational support assistants, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 9 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Childminders · Early education and childcare assistants · Nannies and au pairs · Playworkers · Teaching assistants