If you’re new to teaching, someone may have mentioned unions, or even “professional associations”, a phrase more in tune with the times. But so what? You’re probably a child of the Thatcher era. Your mother may even have given birth to you in an Aamp;E corridor during the winter of discontent when unions were cast in a very bad light by the media.

What is the point of unions these days? Aren’t they just dinosaurs? If you feel like that, then don’t join one. Or, if you’re a mature entrant who’s made a healthy pensionable sum and now wants to slum it and do good in teaching, you probably don’t need to join one either.

But for the rest of you, there are pressing reasons to sign up. You work with children - and children are even less predictable than dangerous equipment such as chainsaws. In this case, you should regard a union as your protective clothing.

Trips, false accusations, assaults, dealing with aggressive children or those with allergies or epilepsy - all of these could lead you into legal minefields. Unions give you the back-up, representation and insurance. No one has ever convinced me that private insurance is in any way equivalent.

All being well, you won’t encounter bullying heads or heads of department, megalomaniac governors, redundancy or disciplinary proceedings. However, every week someone in the profession does meet such problems - and in urgent situations, trade unions’ response times compare very favourably with those of car breakdown organisations. Further down the line, there will also be pensions advice in plain English, the Teachers Benevolent Fund and Teacherline helping many in dire need.

Interestingly, there is one professional organisation that you have to join: the General Teaching Council (GTC). GTI might be a more fitting acronym considering the ludicrously fast speed at which the organisation operates, not to mention its cornering as it weaves its way around initiative after initiative.

David Blunkett invented the council to raise the status of the teaching profession and provide it with a “professional voice”. While joining is compulsory, a lot of teachers seem to be dragging their heels. The ability of the council to help you in times of trouble is untested as yet, but it does have a well-being advisory group which has asserted that the council will challenge the Department for Education and Skills to produce an, er, imaginative and far-reaching work-life balance action plan for the teaching profession. It has also made a video with David “Chariots of Fire” Puttnam in charge. I like to think that it shows teachers running in slow motion and struggling to surmount hurdle after hurdle.

As for the others, you can choose which one to join. There is the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL). It used to be known as the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association, but it shed the dodgy mastermistress label a few years ago.

Back-up services are good, but as the organisation arose out of the grammar school and independent sectors, its members are not ones for militancy. Lately, though, it has begun to realise that the Government doesn’t respond to valid argument so if you’re up for a bit of professional angst and occasional foot-stamping, this is the one for you.

The biggest unions are the National Association of SchoolmastersUnion of Women Teachers (NASUWT) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Legal back-up is good and these are unions that take action.

Both the NUT and the NASUWT have strong representation in the primary and secondary sectors. Nigel De Gruchy of the NASUWT gets on television more than the NUT’s Doug McAvoy. You might consider waiting until you get your first job and then join the one with the most members in your workplace.

Then there is the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT). This organisation believes in “always putting the interests of children first, so ... members never strike, or take other forms of industrial action”. PAT is the smallest union. The bottom line here is that you get protection, but you’re not going to be pro-active.

Are unions against children’s interests? A recent incident illustrates the point.

In one school, major re-roofing work was taking place and overhead drilling brought down quantities of suspicious-looking dust. Teachers were concerned that it might be asbestos. Hasty calls were made to the local education authority, which assured the staff it was nothing to worry about. The authority told them to carry on working.

The union rep of the largest group was unconvinced so that union moved its members and the children out of the affected area. They sent home those who could get home and supervised the rest before walking out. This was “unofficial” and could therefore, in theory at least, get you disbarred from the GTC. The local authority made threats, but union officers ratified the action and closed the school pending further investigation. It was asbestos. Would you have had the nerve to walk out as an individual? Join a union.

Andrew Stanley is a teacher in west London and an NUT member