IT HAS been a historic year for our union. A month ago, 1,200 of us were at our special conference to debate how we move forward with active recruitment of support staff members. For too long our sector has been divided and I am proud to be part of a union that stands for all educators. We work together in our classrooms, teachers and support staff side by side, in harmony for the benefit of our students. Now we will stand side by side in our union, half-a-million members strong and growing, as we do what we must to save education.

I am not someone who always wanted to be a teacher. But in my mid-20s, having worked in the music industry, I applied to do a PGCE in music. I was sent for a day to experience a secondary school music department and what I saw there changed my life. Music was everywhere — participatory, valued, creative, and fun. It was a different time, before the financial crisis. Then in 2010, the coalition government entered the Department for Education (DfE), and we entered an era of austerity. Austerity not just of spending, but austerity of imagination, creativity, pedagogy, and joy. Every aspect of social fabric relating to children was hit, with cuts to Sure Start, youth clubs, mental health services, and the cost of university education passed onto students in the form of debt.

We are now nearly two years into a Labour administration. We have had the curriculum and assessment review and the publication of the recent education white paper, Every child achieving and thriving. The aims are noble, but we also know that the funding assigned for the reforms to Send (special education needs and disability) equate to half a teaching assistant on average for each primary school. Around £13,000 per primary school will not deliver the seismic shift we need in order to get to grips with a Send crisis that has rumbled on for years. This will be swallowed by yet another unfunded pay award with the government once again expecting schools to find “efficiency savings.” The DfE has suggested savings could be made by cutting assistant head and teaching assistant roles. How on Earth can schools deliver increased inclusion if they are also expected to cut the leaders and the vital support staff who deliver specialised support on the ground?

We have the highest class sizes in Europe. More than a million children are now taught in classes of 31 or more. To educate fully cannot simply be a didactic pursuit; it must be an act of love. But that love has been weaponised against us. Working dignity is the least we deserve. For too long educators have had to make do and mend in a broken system. We have also seen the devastating impact of child poverty in our classrooms. One in five schools are running foodbanks. In the sixth largest economy on Earth, in 2026, child poverty is rising. There are 4.5 million children now living in poverty, an average of nine in every class of 30. We cannot expect educators to stem the tide of rising inequality and child poverty while governments pursue the very economic policies that create these conditions.

Education is under attack and we are in a fight for the soul of our schools. Too often, our education system has treated children as problems to be managed rather than minds to be cultivated. Politicians like to speak of “standards” as a lazy catch-all euphemism used as justification for a rigid, narrow, regressive and unimaginative curriculum designed to be easily tested. An education system built on punitive behaviour systems and high-stakes accountability squeezes learners into predetermined pathways. A child-centred education system does not lower standards, it redefines them. In the age of social media and AI, never has it been more crucial to teach critical analysis of sources. Through our “Big tech’s little victims” campaign, we are leading the way, campaigning for vital reforms to protect children.

Populists seek to weaponise the legitimate grievances of people who have been forgotten and abandoned by the political establishment. In the cracks of a smashed social contract, the weeds of racism, prejudice and hatred grow. As trade unionists we know instinctively that an injury to one is an injury to all. When they come for migrants, or Muslims, disabled people or the trans community, we must stand together in response. Change lies in Unity, not division. We must say loud and clear that migrants are not to blame, Muslims are not to blame, trans people are not to blame. People are right to be angry but that we should never punch down. The enemies of working people in this country do not arrive by small boats, they arrive by mega yachts and private jets. On Saturday, over half-a-million people stood together, saying unequivocally that we refuse to be divided by hate.

The last year has shown us that while the challenges we face at home are clear, the forces against us are global. We have seen the horrors of genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine rolling on, the US and Israel’s war against Iran now engulfing the Middle East, conflicts in Sudan and Somalia, the situation in Venezuela, and the continuation and massive escalation of an illegal blockade against the people of Cuba.

That is why I am so proud of the work our union does internationally: the work we do with our sister unions as part of Education International, the refugee solidarity work carried out by members in Calais and Dunkirk, our solidarity with Cuban colleagues as they resist the intensification of the US’s illegal trade blockade against Cuba and its people.

We stand with the educators of Iran at a time when the Iranian people have faced violence from the regime inside and bombardment from the US and Israel outside.

The unending resilience and hope of the Palestinian people is an inspiration to the world. We cannot allow efforts to isolate the Palestinians from the international community to work. One day, members of our two unions will meet together, to promote peace and education for all, in a Free Palestine.

Attacks on the right to protest go on and we must vehemently defend the right to dissent peacefully as a cornerstone of our freedom and democracy. We must never allow ourselves to be cowed in our defence of peace and humanity. We must never be scared to raise our voice against injustice or to stand with the oppressed.

Despite the many challenges we face, I have hope. A better education system is possible, and that means a better world is possible. I believe this because I believe in the transformative power of education, I believe in the power of organised workers, I believe in the young people we work with every day. And I believe in us. I have hope in us.