This paper presents results of a comparative study about assistance services for supporting students with disabilities in regular schools in five European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal, Slovakia and the UK). Besides the analysis of relevant documents on assistance services, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with learning and support assistants (LSAs), teachers and stakeholders from the Ministries of Education were conducted. The context of the study was the Erasmus+ project 'Improving Assistance in Inclusive Education Settings' (IMAS). The aim of the study was to reveal goodpractices, strengths and weaknesses of this service in the five countries. One of the most interesting findings is that Slovakia is the only country with formal and domain-specific qualification requirements for working as an LSA. In line with previous research, further results showed that in all investigated countries, LSAs legally defined roles and responsibilities often do not correspond to their activities performed in practice. Based on these findings, recommendations for improving assistance services have also been provided. These recommendations could support relevant decision-makers in further developing assistance services to ensure adequate support for students with disabilities in regular schools.

In inclusive education, learning and support assistants (LSAs) play an increasingly prominent role in supporting students with disabilities in regular classrooms. Previous research has identified various factors that influence the implementation of inclusive education, such as collaboration and the self-efficacy beliefs amongst the involved professions. The present cross-sectional study examined the self-efficacy beliefs of 89 Styrian LSAs in interaction with their age, qualification, specialist knowledge and quality of collaboration with teachers. Our findings reveal that Styrian LSAs show a high amount of self-efficacy beliefs. Correlations confirm that their age, knowledge about special education, assessment of feeling qualified based on completed training and the estimated quality of teacher collaboration relate significantly to their self-efficacy beliefs. Further analyses demonstrate that respondents who had completed a degree in social work have the highest sense of self-efficacy and are thus feel best qualified for supporting children with disabilities due to their previous training. In line with earlier research, these findings strengthen the claim for LSAs to receive training that would impact their self-efficacy beliefs, which, in the long run, could increase the likelihood of inclusive educational practices being successfully implemented.

By supporting children with disabilities, learning and support assistants have become an essential component of inclusive education in regular schools. Assistants in European countries have various levels of vocational training, but they do not consider themselves to be adequately qualified for what are often highly demanding duties. In an attempt to raise standards, five web-based knowledge boxes have been developed within the Erasmus+ project, ‘Improving Assistance in Inclusive Educational Settings II’. The knowledge boxes are available open access through a learning platform and focus on different aspects of inclusion and disabilities. Learning and support assistants, as well as children from five different European countries, participated in the creation of this tool for professional development. In addition, the knowledge boxes are to be evaluated by assistants, parents, teachers and students in order to assess the impact of the knowledge boxes on the competencies in inclusive education of assistants.

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