The Germ is spreading — an infection that is a threat to teachers, students and the notion of a progressive education system.

What are the symptoms of this Germ? Well, for Pasi Salhberg, the Finnish educationalist who coined the acronym, the key symptoms of the “global education reform movement” include competition within and between schools, the notion of “consumer choice,” standardised testing and test-based accountability and consequential performance-related rewards.

Looking around the world, it is clear to see that much education policy has been infected by this pernicious neoliberal bug.

This is certainly the case in England, where over two decades we have seen the introduction of Standard Attainment Tests, school league tables based on test scores, the fragmentation of the education system through the development of academies and “free schools” and the introduction of performance-related pay.

How is the NUT responding to a “reform” movement that threatens, not only the professionalism of teachers and their accompanying pay and conditions, but the very vision of education that has helped shape, and to a degree was shaped by, the NUT?

Well, a key tenet in the NUT’s response is a turn towards an “organising model” within the union.

While “organising” has always been central to trade union activity, the idea of a formal “organising model” only entered the lexicon of trade unionism, initially in the US and Australia, from the late 1980s.

Arguably, it was with the formation of the TUC’s New Unionism initiative and the launch of its Organising Academy that unions in Britain first made an institutional turn towards “organising.”

But what exactly is the organising model? In general terms, organising is defined as the identification, development and empowerment of local lay leaders, who, through the collective mobilisation of members around issues of concern to them, both improve the working lives of members and rebuild lay union structures on a participative basis.

Implicit within the organising model is recognition of the fundamentally antagonistic relationship between employer and employee.

The turn towards an organising model was thus a movement away from “partnership” and “servicing” models that developed as a result of defeats inflicted upon some unions in the early 1980s.

Servicing was defined by “selling” union membership through an emphasis on individual representation and the provision of “member benefits” such as insurance services.

Collective identity and action was correspondingly downplayed. This situation arguably put more power in the hands of full-time officers and a narrow layer of casework specialists.

For early adherents, there was no doubt the organising model was the most effective — and perhaps only — road to trade union renewal in an era of generalised retreat.

Others were less convinced. Some pointed to an apparent contradiction at the heart of organising — namely, how could a strategy promoted by full-time officials lead to a genuinely sustainable “bottom-up” form of trade unionism?

Others highlighted what was perceived to be a mixed bag of outcomes in terms of trade union renewal based upon organising.

While these are undoubtedly valid questions, what many critiques of the “organising model” miss is that, in Britain at least, there doesn’t really exist one coherent overarching “model.”

Instead, there exist a variety of narratives and practices aimed at trade union renewal. These are often diverse and sometimes contradictory in both aim and application, incorporating elements of “servicing” and “partnership,” but are nevertheless badged as “organising.”

For example, for some unions, “organising” is primarily about recruitment and not necessarily about building strong sustainable lay structures. Other unions focus upon organising techniques to win recognition in “greenfield” sites, at which point officials will take over bargaining arrangements. Others pay attention to in-fill recruitment and a sectoral approach to bargaining.

How are we best to account for these varying practices and narratives? The answer often lies in the interrelationship between the parameters set by objective circumstances, such as the growth or decline of specific sectors of the economy, and more subjective factors including the political direction of individual unions and the relative strength of membership and lay structures.

While the NUT is confronted with a difficult political and ideological context, the union is fortunate in that the number of people coming into teaching is likely to expand as a result of demographic changes. And, partially as a result of a turn to an organising model, the union has already witnessed an accelerated increase in both the number of members and membership density over the past few years, and our local lay structures are healthy.

This offers a solid basis, in challenging times, to progress a vision of the “organising model” that genuinely seeks to further empower lay structures to help improve the working lives of teachers and posit a better vision of education to that defined within the parameters of the neoliberal Germ.

Indeed, the structural change inflicted upon the education service, in particular the thrust towards the break-up of local authorities and the emergence of academy chains, has made this organising approach a burning necessity for the NUT if it is to remain and progress as a lay-led campaigning union.

Christine Blower is general secretary of the National Union of Teachers.