Support staff training has been a huge success in recent years and it has transformed the professional status of the wider workforce. So removing 100 per cent of the funds available for training teaching assistants is a huge backward step and it will throw the schools system into chaos.
The chaos will arise because of the change in classroom cover policy. This policy leads to a greater need for teaching assistants to be trained to become Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTAs), not lesser - but schools are now being told that there is no money available for this.
The axe is falling so quickly that even those people preparing to start training programmes in September will no longer be able to do that. Many schools are simply unable to fill the funding gap at such short notice.
A recent Unison survey revealed that teaching assistants are increasingly being called on to cover for absent teachers, often without having the right training and support to take on this work.
Particularly in primary schools, covering for an absent teacher demands the skills of an HLTA, because young children are not just supervised, they also need to be taught.
The national funding of HLTA training and assessment in the TDA grant is crucial to close that skills gap, as schools cannot afford to train so many HLTAs in just a few years.
It is simply not fair on the staff and the children to ask teaching assistants to cover for absent teachers without providing them with the right training.
The TDA changed its name from the Teacher Training Agency to include the development of support staff. Now the cuts from their overall budget of £750 million will fall on the back of support staff.
So the question needs to be asked - will they change their name back?