TEACHING assistants from across the county will protest today against new measures to be introduced by Cumbria County Council which will see a 30 per cent cut in their wages.

Trade union Unison has planned the demonstration outside Kendal’s County Hall as councillors gather to agree their annual budget which incorporates the Single Status review.

It is designed to redress the balance of staff terms and conditions, including pay, annual leave and allowances and to remove discrepancies that might give rise to equal-pay claims.

Teaching assistants will be among the hardest hit. Full-time teaching assistants earn between £14,700 and £16,800 a year.

Under single status the typical salary is likely to fall to £12,500.

Lynne Veevers, a teaching assistant at Vicarage Park Primary School, Kendal, believes single status will dramatically affect the well-being of schools.

“This will have a massive impact on our wage,” she said.

“We haven’t had our letters of notification and we will be the last to be informed by the council.

"I know that in the current climate we are lucky to have jobs, but I feel it is all being brushed under the carpet so we want to bring it to people’s attention.”

A county council spokesman said it recognised the important job done by teaching assistants, adding: “... there have been traditional inequalities in what was recognised as a full time working week among different categories of county council employees and we need to address those inequalities as part of our legal requirement to implement single status.”

Fellow Vicarage Park teaching assistant Pat Hartley said: “I am the main wage earner and I cannot afford to be £300 down a month.

"I physically cannot pay the bills. A lot of my colleagues are thinking they are going to have to find another job. We are being undervalued and underpaid.”

All local authorities are legally required to implement single status and Cumbria intends to put it in place from September 1.

Teaching assistants are affected because their full-time working week has traditionally been classed as 32.5 hours, in line with teachers.

But the changes mean that a full-time working week for council employees will be classed as 37 hours, so they will not qualify for a full-time wage.

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron said: “The council has ‘de-professionalised’ the profession.

"You have to do qualifications for this job, and they will often take the whole class for lessons.

"You will lose goodwill and the morale of the school will be affected.”

Mike Prince, of Staveley Primary School, is one of a number of headteachers in the Windermere area who have put their name to a letter urging the council to think again.

“Although the basis of this process was to achieve fairness, and that was right, to expect a portion of the workforce to deal with this pay cut says an awful lot about how one perceives that part of the workforce - if it was me, I would be thinking: ‘They do not value me’.”

The council insists there is no financial incentive for the move, with schools’ individual finances actually benefiting from any savings made in wages.