Resistance ahead of heartless schooling cut (9)
I believe the answer is:
reduction
'cut' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'resistance ahead of heartless schooling' is the wordplay.
'resistance' becomes 'r' (abbreviation).
'ahead of' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (I've seen this in other clues).
'heartless' means to remove the middle letters.
'schooling' becomes 'education' (I've seen this before).
'education' with its centre removed is 'eduction'.
'r'+'eduction'='REDUCTION'
(Other definitions for reduction that I've seen before include "cutback!" , "Decrease, diminution" , "Introduce by way of discount" , "thickened sauce?" , "Lessening" .)