Schools in the North East are facing a ‘crisis’ recruiting and holding onto teaching assistants and other support staff due to increased pressure and higher wages being offered by other employers.

The Schools North East group, which represents 1,000 schools around the region, said two-thirds of school leaders it surveyed recently were struggling to recruit permanent staff, with teaching assistants and support staff of particular concern. One school reported having a teaching assistant vacancy for more than eight months while another that is opening a new site was concerned that it would not have skills in place for the new school.

Many teaching assistants were able to move to higher paying jobs in other sectors, particularly the NHS, and efforts to help retention of staff by moving them to higher grades or offering in-house training were constrained by school budgets, the group said. Schools North East said there had been significant increases in workload pressures, as a result of rising numbers of students with special needs.

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Many school leaders are worried for children’s welfare in the absence of trained support workers.

Chris Zarraga, director of Schools North East, said: “Without high quality teaching assistants, early years foundation stage (EYFS) specialists, language and communication specialists, educational psychologists, and other pastoral support roles, schools are unable to identify gaps and deliver necessary interventions. If the crisis in recruitment of teaching assistants is not addressed, there is a real risk of further widening educational inequalities.”

The Schools North East survey also highlighted higher levels of children being expelled from schools due to “persistent disruptive behaviour”. It also said in some cases that the reason for this behaviour was schools not being able to meet pupils’ additional needs. The survey also noted “significant groups of students who are persistently and severely absent, and in some cases refusing to attend at all.”

The survey has been released a few months after exam results in England showed a widening gap in attainment, with the North East falling further behind other regions in the proportion of young people getting top grades in both GCSE and A-levels. Research published last week suggested that pupils who are absent from school during the exam years are more likely to receive worse GCSE grades than their peers, an analysis has suggested.

Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, has called for urgent action to tackle absenteeism among pupils as she said inactivity risks “failing a generation of children”. The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.