Striking teaching assistants will be handed a cash bonus by unions in time for Christmas.

The Unison public sector union will pay £8,000 for every day of industrial action to ensure members "are not out of pocket".

Schools across Brighton and Hove are being forced to close today as a dispute between teaching staff and the city council means up to 9,000 children will be sent home.

Parents forced to pay large child care bills or take time off work have been hit financially.

But staff on strike will receive up to £5.50 an hour to replace wages taken out of the December pay packet by council bosses for strike action on November 25 and 26.

The teaching assistants have been offered new grades and higher rates of pay. They are striking over council attempts to reduce the number of weeks for which they receive pay because they only work during term time.

Council officers claim nine out of ten will be better off under the new scheme and offered to go before the Acas conciliation service.

Unison's Brighton and Hove branch has a war chest of £40,000 and is expecting a gift of £100,000 from the national office to cover strike pay.

Angry parent Elizabeth Dunstall, 34, of Colgate Close, Brighton, has sent an invoice to the council to cover her childcare costs for the two days.

The council staff member said her youngest daughter would not be forced to go home during today's strike. But the mother-of-three said: "I am disappointed to learn teaching assistants can go on strike but will still get pay. The strikers can look after their own children, and they are being paid to have time off, but parents cannot."

Labour peer and former council leader Lord Bassam of Brighton, whose nine-year-old daughter is expecting to be sent home from Queen's Park Junior School today, said: "The industrial action has certainly proved to be an inconvenience and I've had to spend some time looking after my daughter, which I don't mind in itself but there are serious issues around education."

The unions accused the council of being a Scrooge for docking pay before Christmas. They claimed the council usually took two months to claw back money paid during strike action but had rushed the process for the festive period to cover strike action in November.

Alex Knutsen, chairman of the council Unison branch, said: "They are deliberately trying to force people back to work to undermine the dispute. We are not going to see our members out of pocket for Christmas."

The council denied money would be deducted early to hit strikers over the festive period.

A spokesman from the council said: "We have made no special effort to deduct money from salaries for the stoppages on November 25 and 26. Strikers would have been expecting money to be deducted as soon as it was practical and most would have expected it to go from the December pay packet.

"It's not practical to deduct pay for today's strike so that will be deducted in January."

The day of action will begin with pickets at Cardinal Newman secondary school in The Upper Drive, Hove.

There will also be strikers outside St Andrew's primary in Belfast Street, Hove, and Hangleton Infant and Junior schools in Dale View, Hove.

The teaching assistants will then join a rally at Brighton Town Hall before marching to the council offices in Kings House, Grand Avenue, Hove.