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Teachers are taking real steps towards unity

Teaching professionals would have a stronger voice if we belonged to one union – and March 1 was a start, says CHRISTINE BLOWER

PROFESSIONAL unity has been a policy aspiration for the National Union of Teachers for as long as I have been an activist.

On March 1 that aspiration took a step towards implementation.

Government attacks on teachers and teaching make professional unity ever more important. Trade unions both here and globally are under attack.

The Global Education Reform Movement, or Germ, is an expression elegantly and appositely coined by Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish Education expert.

He was the last ever chief inspector of schools in Finland. They no longer have inspection.

And yet Finland has the most successful education system in Europe, according to the OECD.

Germ sees education as a prime area for privatisation.

Schools to be run for private profit and children and young people exposed and subjected to a curriculum which is not about personal development, creativity and fulfilment but rather about hitting politically motivated government-set targets.

This vision links together all that, as teacher unions, we see is wrong with our education system.

After a delay of nearly a year, and thanks in large part to a campaign by teacher union members, the Diary Survey of teacher working hours has been published.

It was released, ironically, on TUC Work Your Proper Hours Day. Ironically because year-on-year teachers work more unpaid overtime than any other group of workers.

Under this government there has been a huge increase in working hours with primary classroom teachers now working 60 hours a week.

If you divide an early career teacher’s pay by the number of hours worked, they are getting little more than the minimum wage.

In a sense for teachers the fact that so little of the work taking up all these hours contributes anything positive to what they do in the classroom is the bigger problem.

Children and young people deserve enthusiastic and engaged teachers, not overstretched and stressed-out ones.

No wonder so many leave the profession within the first five years — two out of five, according to Ofsted chief Michael Wilshawe.

Teacher pay has fallen by about 15 per cent over recent years due to a combination of below-inflation pay awards or no pay award and the increase in pension contributions for a worse pension and more years of work to get it.

Teaching to the age of 68 or beyond is simply untenable for the vast majority of teachers.

In these circumstances it makes little sense for six teacher unions to engage in fierce and aggressive recruitment battles with each other, exacerbating differences rather than accentuating the common positions we all hold.

Delegates to the March 1 conference heard contributions from teaching unions NUT, ATL, UCAC, NAHT and ASCL, which all spoke of the need to work together in the interests of all our members and the education service.

Delegates also heard from Ritva Semi of OAJ, the only Finnish teachers’ union.

She outlined the journey the individual unions had taken to become one organisation, a single and strong voice for all teachers.

In Finland, under successive governments, no education policy has been made without the input of the OAJ for 40 years. A clear and working example of “nothing about us, without us.”

Norwegian teachers, too, have more recently come together into a single organisation. It can be done.

Of course it true that the history of the trade union movement is littered with mergers forced out of weakness which have failed or left the resulting union no stronger.

This is not the situation in teaching.

All the unions which currently exist could easily survive and even thrive but at the cost of expending resources which could otherwise be used for the advancement of our campaigns in defence of education and our members collectively and individually.

I am very proud of the National Union of Teachers. I joined as a student and was active throughout the time I taught.

I had other choices but chose the NUT.

Members of other unions made choices, too. No-one imagines that achieving a new, single union will be easy but all unions have worked together at different times.

I’m proud of the work the NUT has done with ATL, NASUWT, UCAC and NAHT. We need to do more of this.

But ultimately unity is strength. Half a million teachers speaking up for the profession on pay, on pensions, on workload on accountability and on the right of children and young people to an education which puts them before profit with one voice would indeed be powerful.

Delegates to the March 1 conference were inspired by the idea of professional unity and had many good ideas about how to take it forward.

So as Mary Bousted of ATL said in her remarks, we’d better get on with it.

I remain very proud of the NUT with its long history since its founding in 1870, but I would be very pleased to play a part in taking teacher trade unionism forward to real professional unity.

Christine Blower is general secretary of the NUT.

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