We hear you and are here for you

NEU joint general secretary Mary Bousted says your concerns about pay, poverty, Ofsted and workload drive the work of your union.

THIS will be my last Educate column as Kevin and I come to the end of our fiveyear term as joint general secretaries of the NEU. In that time the union has grown in membership, power and influence.

Of course, size matters. The more members the NEU has, the more legitimacy it has to speak on their behalf and the more leverage to improve their working lives. But size alone is no guarantee of an effective union. To be effective, unions must listen to their members, stay in touch with their concerns and be widely perceived to be acting in their interests.

With Kevin, I have been proud to meet thousands of members. You are not, generally, a shy, retiring bunch and have been keen to tell me what you think. It is your concerns which steer the work of your union.

The straw that broke the camel’s back

You have told us that excessive, intensive workload is a major driver of the exodus of teachers from the profession. Ofsted has loomed large in your thoughts as the constant pressure of impending inspections, the ineptitude of too many inspectors, and the strong and unfair correlation between schools serving disadvantaged communities and poor Ofsted grades leave you demoralised and distressed.

More recently, pay has become a major issue for you. It is, for many, the straw that has broken the camel’s back. And no wonder. Years of under-inflation pay awards have eroded the value of teachers’ salaries, leaving them as the profession which has had the lowest pay growth of any of the public sector professions in dispute with Government.

Underlying all of these acute concerns is a growing realisation that the work that teachers, leaders and support staff do is just not valued by this Government. On recent strike marches in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff, teachers told me how their work has been made even harder by the poverty of so many children and young people. Schools have been left stranded, trying to support pupils and their parents as local authority services are cut back or are buckling under the weight of demand.

A quarter of a million children in the UK with mental health problems have been denied help by the NHS. Last year, 29 per cent of children – 4.2 million – were living in poverty; that’s nine in a classroom of 30.

Forty per cent of the attainment gap between poor children and their better-off peers is created before they start school. Poverty does immense damage to children’s ability to fulfil their potential. And yet schools are starved of resources which could help them to compensate for the damage done to children’s intellectual and physical development because they are poor.

It is these concerns – over workload, poverty, inspection and pay – which have driven the furious reaction of NEU members to the Government’s most recent pay offer, which you have, rightly, judged to be inadequate and insulting. It will do nothing to address the recruitment and retention crisis in the profession.

Six-month legal re-ballot on pay

So your union will be asking you, again, to take action to stand up for your profession and for the pupils you teach and care for so deeply. We will be re-balloting members this term to enable you to take action in the autumn term. This time, we hope and expect, with the NAHT, ASCL and the NASUWT.

We know that you would rather be teaching, but there comes a time to demand that the invaluable work you do is recognised and rewarded and now is that time.

And Kevin and I are certain that acting in solidarity with other NEU members, and with other unions, you will win.