Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, warned at its annual conference in Brighton last week, 'If the money's not there the changes won't happen.'
Mr Prentis said the union, which was a signatory in January to the Government's workload agreement, would continue to challenge 'the scandalous abuse of term-time working' and be 'keeping faith with the tens of thousands of teaching assistants who joined our union in the last year'.
Discontent over the Government's failure to fund the agreement and Unison's decision to back it surfaced at the union's local government conference early last week. A series of motions condemned the leadership for agreeing to the proposals. One motion said, 'It appears that Unison has agreed to its members increasing their duties and responsibilities, but has not established any safeguards or improvements to their terms and conditions.'
The critical motions were defeated, but a leadership-backed resolution called for an end to term-time only pay, a national agreement on pay, grading and job description for all school support staff and a fully-paid qualification route into teaching for teaching assistants.
Unison's anger is unlikely to be assuaged by the eight-point prospectus for developing training and qualifications for support staff in schools launched last week by schools minister David Miliband, which made no reference to pay re-grading to match new qualifications.
Mr Miliband welcomed the decision of the Learning and Skills Council to provide 1,000 places on a pilot programme to help school administrators, midday supervisors and caretakers obtain qualifications. Other elements in the prospectus include induction training funded by the Department for Education and Skills, two training programmes for bursars, training in behaviour management and pupil support and a qualifications 'map' showing all the different qualifications available to support staff from various awarding bodies.
The Professional Association of Teachers welcomed the training and qualifications prospectus. General secretary Pat Gemmell said, 'Support staff already play a vital role in our schools, and this will increase under the workload agreement. It is therefore imperative that they have the training and qualifications they need and opportunities for career progression.'
She added that the Government's announcement was 'only the start' and the union wanted to 'see a national pay structure and increased and appropriate salaries for support staff.'