THE final conference of the NUT offers us an opportunity to reflect on the proud traditions of the National Union of Teachers and its predecessor the National Union of Elementary Teachers. 

It gives us an opportunity to celebrate the victories the union has won in its 147-year history and the difference it has made to the lives of its members, and the lives of the children they teach.

However, it also forces us to confront some significant questions about the future of the movement. 

The process of amalgamation with the ATL, and the creation of the National Education Union, has provided an opportunity to reflect on the aims and purposes of an education union, to consider not only what we have achieved in the past but what our ongoing relevance is in the future. Crucially, why do we need an organised education workforce and what can such an organised workforce achieve?

Throughout the history of the trade union movement, there have been a variety of different answers to the question: what is the purpose of a trade union? Most of these, however, are variations on one of two basic philosophies of trade unionism.

The first views the workplace, and the structure of wider society, while not without its problems and distortions, as fundamentally just. 

It argues that the main role of trade unions is to ensure, within the current system of industrial relations, the fair treatment of trade union members. 

It may even go as far as to advocate or campaign for improvements in the legal systems of protections for working people. But fundamentally it seeks improvements within the system and to align the interests of all stakeholders “for the common good.” It does not recognise any fundamental difference of interests between working people and those who hold economic and political power.

The problem with this view, when applied to education, is that it simply doesn’t stand up to closer inspection. 

Even a cursory acquaintance with education policy over the last 30 years shows fundamental differences of opinion around the purpose, structure and management of the education system. 

The coincidence of interests between the policies set in motion by the 1988 Education Reform Act and those of Conservative-led governments since 2010 (what Professor Howard Stevenson refers to as the realisation of the “1988 project”) is not a matter of chance.

Similarly, the underlying continuity throughout the New Labour years (albeit with some real and meaningful differences in implementation), and the alignment of policy trajectories internationally (often referred to as the Global Education Reform Movement) are not matters of chance. 

They represent an understanding of, and vision for, education which is fundamentally opposed to that of teachers and other education professionals. Crucially, it is also fundamentally opposed to the interests of the majority of those they teach.

At the classroom level, this difference of interests is, if anything, sharper. New management policies have stripped away professional autonomy and confidence from educators, subjecting them to “performance”-related rewards and punishments, based on narrow measures of school effectiveness, which have nothing to do with genuine education and have a knock-on effect on the curriculum, increasingly narrowing and stripping out valuable educational experiences for children.

As a profession, teachers have resisted these changes in a variety of ways, individually and collectively. Teachers’ natural inclination to question, to challenge, to seek to understand and, where necessary to subvert bad policy, has ensured that the monotone vision of a measurable, standardised education has failed to take root in the majority of classrooms and the majority of schools. However, I believe it is the role of our union to collectivise these battles.

As Benjamin Jealous Todd said: “There are only two types of power: there’s organised people and organised money, and organised money only wins when people aren’t organised.” 

The counter to the vested interests that seek to “reform” our education system is to organise and mobilise the creative power of education workers. 

As the rules of the National Education Union state in Aim 1: “To promote and support education as a critical and creative process, which enables learners to understand and contribute to wider society and the world in which they live and to change it for the better.”

Gawain Little is a member of the NEU (NUT Section) national executive.