People imagine a Special Educational Needs (SEN) assistant sitting quietly beside a child, occasionally helping with a worksheet or reminding them to pay attention. They assume we are classroom helpers, teaching assistants, or perhaps even glorified babysitters. Nothing could be further from the truth.

An AESH is neither a teacher nor a carer, although there are days when the job requires the patience of one, the diplomacy of the other, and the adaptability of both. We are there to make education accessible. Sometimes that means helping a pupil organise their work, writing for someone who physically cannot hold a pen, preventing sensory overload before it becomes a meltdown or saying absolutely nothing because the best support is allowing a student to discover they can succeed independently!

The irony is that almost everyone sees us sitting in the classroom, yet very few people really understand what we do. After more than five years working as an AESH in France, I came to realise that our profession is probably one of the most misunderstood in the entire education system. And I don’t say that lightly. At one point, even France’s own ex Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, publicly referred to AESH as teachers. It made many of us smile. If the country’s top education official couldn’t clearly distinguish our profession from that of a teacher, what chance did the general public have of understanding what we actually did?

This article is not an attack on teachers, school leaders or the French education system. I met wonderful professionals during my career—teachers who genuinely cared, headteachers who fought for their pupils, and parents whose resilience humbled me every day.

But I also witnessed something else. A profession built on goodwill rather than preparation. A profession expected to support increasingly complex disabilities while receiving surprisingly little support itself. And perhaps most frustrating of all, a profession that remains largely invisible despite playing a crucial role in inclusive education.

From AVS to AESH

For many years, pupils with disabilities in France were supported by Assistantes de Vie Scolaire (AVS), a role that was already marked by insecurity. Contracts were temporary, career prospects were almost non-existent, and many people entered the profession without any real expectation of long-term stability. When the Accompgnant.e d’Elèves en Situation de Handicap (AESH) status was introduced, it was presented as a significant step forward. The aim was to professionalise the role, offer greater continuity for pupils, and provide better employment conditions for the adults supporting them.

The reality has proved to be far more complex. Yes, the AVS title disappeared, but many of the structural problems simply survived under a different name. Today, many AESH are still employed on incomplete contracts that are neither genuinely part-time by choice nor full-time positions offering financial security. For many, making a living from a single AESH contract remains extremely difficult.

The contract system itself illustrates this contradiction. Most new AESH begin on a fixed-term contract, initially for three years, renewable once. In theory, after six years of continuous service, they become eligible for a permanent contract (CDI), a milestone that should reward experience and provide greater stability. In practice, however, many AESH and trade unions have criticised the way this system operates. Some report that contracts are simply not renewed as the six-year mark approaches, allowing experienced staff to leave while new recruits are hired on fresh fixed-term contracts instead. Although this is not the case everywhere in France, it has fuelled a widespread feeling that experience is not always valued as highly as it should be.

This is one of the paradoxes of the profession. Schools desperately need experienced AESH. Pupils benefit enormously from continuity and accumulated expertise. Yet many of the people who have spent years developing those skills still struggle to obtain the recognition and job security that such experience ought to bring. It is therefore hardly surprising that many AESH continue to campaign for greater professional recognition, including the possibility of becoming fonctionnaires. For many, this is not simply about employment status or salary; it is about finally recognising that supporting disabled pupils is not a temporary occupation but a genuine profession requiring specialised skills, experience and commitment.

Nobody Really Explains What an AESH Does

Ask ten people in France what an AESH does and you’ll probably receive ten different answers.

Some believe we teach the child. Others think we take notes. Some imagine we stay beside one pupil all day. Others assume we’re there to control behaviour. The truth is much more nuanced. Our role is to compensate for the consequences of a disability—not to replace the teacher, not to become a private tutor, and certainly not to complete schoolwork instead of the student.

Parents sometimes expect us to provide private lessons after school. Teachers occasionally assume we should take over certain responsibilities that legally belong to them. School staff may not always know where our role begins and ends.

Even the AESH themselves are often left trying to figure it out as they go! The official job description is one thing. Real life is another.

My First Days: Somewhere Between Teacher and Student

I still remember arriving at one of my first schools. Nobody introduced me to the staff. Nobody explained how the school worked.

Was there a locker where I could leave my belongings? NO.

Could I use the staff room? NO.

Could I use the photocopier if my student needed enlarged worksheets? NO.

Did I even have somewhere to sit during breaks? Not really. It sounds almost amusing now, but at the time it was deeply unsettling. I wasn’t a teacher nor a student. I didn’t really seem to belong anywhere. A few only welcomed the AESH as genuine members of the educational team. Others treated us as temporary visitors who simply happened to be present! In some establishments, we weren’t even allowed to use the staff room. Imagine spending your entire working day in a school while having nowhere designated to rest, prepare your work or simply take five minutes to breathe between lessons. These details might appear insignificant to someone reading this. They aren’t. Because they send a message: you are useful but you don’t quite belong.

The Photocopier Privilege

For the first four years of my career as a SEN Assistant, I didn’t have a printer card. Not because I wasn’t entitled to one, but because nobody ever told me it existed. Like teachers, the AESH are public employees and have the right to use the school’s printing facilities for work-related purposes. It was only when a staff representative mentioned that I should already have a printer card that I realised something was wrong. Apparently, I had been entitled to one from the very beginning. Until then, whenever one of my students needed an adapted document, I often had to rely on the goodwill of teachers, asking whether they could make copies for me—or even spare a little of their own printing quota so I could prepare resources for the student I was supporting.

When I eventually requested my own card, some members of staff seemed genuinely surprised that an AESH could have one at all. The school trusted me to support some of its most vulnerable pupils every day, yet nobody had thought to tell me I was allowed to use the photocopier. Too often, the AESH are treated as though they simply pass through the school rather than belong to it. We are expected to remove barriers for disabled students while quietly navigating barriers of our own! You are essential when a disabled student needs support, but strangely invisible when it comes to information, resources or even the most basic professional rights.

Fragmented Support

During my career, I repeatedly saw available AESH hours divided equally between pupils, regardless of the complexity of their disabilities. When I first started, I worked with two students. Instead of carefully assessing how much support each individual actually required, my working hours were simply split in half. If I worked twenty hours a week, each student received ten. Administrative simplicity replaced educational reasoning.

Later, I saw even more concerning situations. Some pupils officially had an AESH assigned to them but received only five or six hours of support each week. For certain learners, that may well be appropriate. For others—particularly autistic pupils or students with significant dyspraxia, physical disabilities or multiple additional needs—it barely scratches the surface.

The result is that everyone can say the child “has an AESH”, while in reality support is fragmented. Families understandably become frustrated. The AESH are left trying to perform miracles with impossible timetables.

Nobody wins. Least of all the pupil.

Skills and Salaries

People often imagine the AESH working mainly in nursery or primary schools. In fact, many of us support teenagers and even adult students studying at college or vocational level. Some of the subjects I encountered would surprise people: advanced mathematics and physics, engineering, architecture, the resistance of materials (RDM) which is part of continuum mechanics!

Imagine sitting beside a student with a physical disability who cannot take notes quickly enough. The teacher dictates mathematical formulas at speed. Symbols appear one after another. Technical vocabulary fills the room. You have only seconds to write accurately while ensuring your student doesn’t miss the next explanation. Nobody prepares you for that. On another occasion, I supported a student studying architecture. I sometimes had to produce technical drawings on his behalf while he directed me. These weren’t simple sketches. They included architectural details, insulation layouts, and construction drawings that had to be accurate enough for his coursework. I’m not an architect, yet for a few hours each week I found myself translating his ideas into technical plans while trying to keep pace with the lesson.

Being an AESH in a nursery school requires one set of skills. Supporting a teenager studying engineering requires another. Yet every AESH receives essentially the same salary, regardless of the complexity of the educational environment in which they work. The profession is far more diverse than many people realise. And that diversity deserves far greater recognition than it currently receives.

Training?

“Did they train you before you started?” It’s a question I’ve been asked many times. The answer isn’t straightforward.

By the time I became an AESH in France, I wasn’t starting from scratch. Years earlier, in 2008–2009, I had completed an NCFE Level 3 Teaching Assistant qualification through a British distance-learning college. I had chosen that course largely because special educational needs already interested me, particularly autism. That interest wasn’t purely academic. Autism was already part of my family’s story. My nephew is autistic, my aunt has both Down syndrome and autism, and my mother is autistic and also lives with a physical disability affecting her right wrist. Disability and neurodivergence were therefore not abstract concepts I had discovered in a textbook. They were part of my everyday life long before they became part of my professional life.

When I eventually joined the French education system as an AESH, I already had a solid foundation. In some situations, I was surprised to realise that my understanding of autism and neurodivergence was greater than that of some education professionals I worked alongside. Ironically, despite arriving with that background, I still had an enormous amount to learn. Not because of the official training—which, in my case, wouldn’t arrive for another three years—but because every student, every disability and every classroom teaches you something no course ever can.

One of the changes introduced with the creation of the AESH status was the introduction of a mandatory 60-hour initial training programme. On paper, this was a welcome step forward. Unlike the former AVS system, where there was no national compulsory training before or upon taking up the role, AESH were at least supposed to receive a basic introduction to disability, inclusive education and their professional responsibilities.

The key word, however, is supposed. As I said, in my case, that mandatory training didn’t arrive until my final year as an AESH. By then, I had already spent years supporting students with a wide range of disabilities, attending educational meetings, adapting classroom materials and learning the profession largely through experience. When I finally attended those sixty hours of training, I couldn’t help smiling. Some of the sessions were genuinely interesting, and I certainly learned new things. But I also couldn’t ignore the irony: the training that was meant to prepare me for the job arrived after I had already been doing it for years.

You’re just an “AESH”!

One stereotype has always amused me. Many people—including, surprisingly, some teachers—seem to imagine that an AESH is simply a mother looking for a part-time job while her children are at school. Of course, some AESH do fit that profile, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But it is only one profile among many. There are also men in the profession, although they are still in the minority.

Before becoming an AESH, I had worked in several different fields, lived in Ireland where I ran my own online business, and was studying at university with the goal of becoming a teacher. I wasn’t unique. One of my colleagues was working as a professional photographer. Another held a PhD in chemistry. Over the years, I met AESH with remarkably diverse backgrounds, bringing a wealth of experience that often went unnoticed simply because of their job title.

I remember one teacher in particular. She had previously taught at Sorbonne Nouvelle, where I happened to be completing the final year of my own Master degree. Until she discovered that, our relationship had been… distant, to say the least. Like some others, she seemed to assume that I was simply “the AESH”—someone with little academic background and little to contribute beyond supporting a student. The moment she realised we shared the same university and the same academic field, her attitude changed noticeably.

No Induction, No Mentor, No Map

Starting in a new school should feel like joining a team. For many AESH, it doesn’t.

Throughout my career, I was never offered an induction day. Nobody sat down with me to explain how the school functioned, introduce me to colleagues or outline the specific needs of the students I would support. There was no mentor, no handbook and no reassuring voice saying, “If you’re unsure, just ask.” You simply arrived… and were expected to get on with it.

Looking back, that lack of guidance seems extraordinary. We were working with some of the most vulnerable learners in the education system, yet many of us began our careers with little more than goodwill and common sense. Goodwill is essential, but it is not a training programme.

As the years went by, I began noticing something that took me straight back to my own first day. Whenever a new AESH arrived in a school—whether at the beginning of the year or in the middle of it— there would often be someone standing alone in a corridor, looking slightly lost, unsure where to go or who to ask. I recognised that expression immediately because I had worn it myself. I decided that, if the system wasn’t going to welcome a new AESH, then I would! Whenever I met a new colleague, I introduced myself, showed them around the school, explained the little things nobody else seemed to mention, and made sure they had my phone number in case they ever needed advice or simply someone to reassure them that they weren’t the only one feeling overwhelmed. It wasn’t part of my job description. It was simply the kind of welcome I wish someone had given me. No professional should be left to navigate such a demanding role feeling invisible from day one!

The PIAL

My final year as an AESH coincided with the introduction of the PIAL system. PIAL stands for Pôles Inclusifs d’Accompagnement Localisés. It is a system that groups AESH into local networks managed across several schools, rather than attaching them permanently to one school or one pupil. The stated aim was to improve flexibility and ensure that pupils with disabilities could be supported more efficiently, depending on where needs were identified.

This reform changed the structure of the profession at its core. At the same time, a new role appeared: the référent·e AESH—an AESH coordinator or mentor, usually an experienced colleague still working in the classroom, but given additional responsibility to support other AESH. However, the main organisational power remained with the PIAL structure and school leadership teams, who decide assignments and timetables.

Many AESH began to be assigned across several schools, sometimes within the same week or even the same day. The job became less about following a stable group of pupils and more about constantly adapting to changing schedules and locations. Over time, this fragmentation has had a direct impact on the profession itself. It makes it harder to build continuity with pupils, harder to feel integrated into a school team, and harder to develop a stable professional identity. Instead of becoming embedded in a school environment, many AESH find themselves permanently “in transit” between sites, pupils and expectations.

This instability is one of the reasons many AESH leave the profession or choose not to renew their contracts.

The Working Time Nobody Mentions

One detail of this organisation is still widely misunderstood. When an AESH moves from one school to another during the day, the time spent travelling is part of working time. Walking between schools or using public transport is not personal time—it is part of the job. Yet many AESH are never clearly informed of this when they start. Some schools are also unclear about how it should be accounted for in practice. As a result, this time is often absorbed into schedules without explanation, and many AESH only discover later that it should be formally recognised.

Relationships Inside the School

Working inside a school means constantly navigating human relationships—some supportive, some indifferent, and sometimes deeply uncomfortable. With teachers, experiences vary widely. Some are collaborative and respectful, fully recognising the AESH as part of the educational team. Others maintain a distance that feels more like hierarchy than teamwork, as if the AESH role exists outside the professional structure of the school. On occasion, this can go as far as being spoken to in a way that feels misplaced, as though one were still a student rather than a colleague.

When Boundaries Are Crossed

There are also experiences that are harder to talk about, but impossible to ignore.

During my career, I experienced sexual harassment and coercive behaviour from a male colleague during a school trip. He made repeated personal advances towards me, and the situation created an environment where professional boundaries were clearly crossed. There was also an implicit pressure, where refusal felt like it could lead to professional retaliation or consequences affecting my work. What made the situation particularly serious was the imbalance of power. In a school environment, the AESH occupy a structurally vulnerable position, with less authority and protection than permanent teaching staff.

In parallel to this, the same colleague was regularly absent from teaching without properly informing the school administration. Instead, he communicated directly with students through a WhatsApp group he had created, informing them of his absences, while the school itself was not officially notified. This created a situation where his presence and absence were not properly monitored at institutional level. The issue eventually came to light when I arrived to support a student and found the classroom empty, despite no cancellation being recorded. This discrepancy raised questions at administrative level and led the school to investigate his attendance more broadly. It became clear that this pattern had occurred on multiple occasions. The teacher subsequently left the school, and I was no longer required to work in contact with him.

Parents: Between Trust, Gratitude, and Tension

Working as an AESH also means being in constant contact with parents. In many cases, these relationships are positive, sometimes even deeply moving. Some families are simply grateful that someone is there to support their child on a daily basis. Over the years, I received messages of thanks, small gestures of appreciation, and moments where parents clearly saw the difference that consistent support could make in their child’s progress.

Those moments matter. They are often what keep people in the profession despite the difficulties. But the relationship is not always straightforward.

There is often confusion about what an AESH is allowed to do, and what falls outside of our role. On several occasions, I had to clarify that I was not a private tutor and that my role was to support access to learning within the school environment, not to provide individual lessons or academic coaching outside of it. Most parents understood this once it was explained. Some did not. In one case, a parent reacted very aggressively after I explained that I could not provide private academic support outside my role. The expectation seemed to come from a misunderstanding of what AESH work actually involves, particularly in private schooling contexts where families may feel that all staff are directly accountable for academic outcomes. The situation escalated to the point where I was personally threatened, and I had to report it through official channels to ensure my own protection.

In addition to these situations, guidance from the ERSEH (Enseignant Référent pour la Scolarisation des Élèves en situation de Handicap, the special educational needs coordinator responsible for overseeing the schooling pathway of disabled students within the French system) and from the rectorate increasingly clarified that AESH should avoid direct contact with parents wherever possible. Communication is expected to go through the educational team — teachers or school leadership — who remain the official point of contact between families and support staff. This is largely to prevent misunderstandings or situations where AESH can be directly pressured or placed in difficult positions by families who do not fully understand the limits of the role.

I have personally experienced situations that illustrate why this boundary exists. In one case, a parent whose child was experiencing bullying insisted that I attend a meeting with the headteacher, even though I had not been invited or formally requested to participate. I was contacted and asked to attend directly, but I could not simply insert myself into a meeting organised at leadership level without being officially called. From my side, I had already reported the situation through the proper channels to the school administration. From the parent’s perspective, she understandably wanted my presence to support her son’s case. But this mismatch of expectations created tension, because the professional boundaries of the role were not the same on both sides. These kinds of situations explain why communication protocols have become more formalised.

At the same time, it is important to say that this was not the majority of experiences. Most parents I worked with were respectful, even when they were anxious or under pressure about their child’s progress. Many were simply trying to navigate a system that is itself complex and not always clearly explained. Being an AESH often means standing in the middle: between the school and the family, between educational expectations and real-life limitations, and sometimes between misunderstanding and trust.

Final Word

If there is one thing I would take away from all these years as an AESH, and later as a teacher, it is this: inclusion is not a policy line, and it is not the simple fact of placing a SEN child in a mainstream classroom. Inclusion is what happens in the space between the system and the child — in the daily reality of whether support is stable, understood, and properly structured. In practice, much of what determines a pupil’s experience is not the law, but the organisation of human relationships around them: how much time an AESH is given, how often that support changes, whether professionals are properly informed, and whether their role is recognised as part of the educational team or treated as an invisible add-on.

Despite everything described in this article, what remains with me most are the pupils themselves. The moments of progress that looked small from the outside but were significant for the child. The trust that builds slowly. The day a task becomes possible that was not possible before. These are the parts of the job that are not visible in official texts, but that define its reality.

Years later, I sometimes find myself wondering what has become of the children and young adults I supported. On occasion, I have searched for their names online and discovered LinkedIn profiles, studies, or professional paths taking shape. Seeing them move forward, build their place in society, and develop their own lives brings a quiet sense of fulfilment that is difficult to put into formal words. It is not about recognition, and it is not about credit. It is simply about witnessing, even from a distance, that their journey continued. And perhaps that is what remains, above everything else: the feeling that even small moments of support can leave a trace that continues long after the classroom.