Is the end nigh for teaching unions in England? That’s the controversial question posed in a new book about education unions around the globe.

It argues that teachers’ unions in England are alone in the Western world in having lost huge amounts of power over the past 30 years.

Is that true? And if that’s the case, is it a cause for regret or - as one prominent US academic suggests - is it a good thing?

The Comparative Politics of Education: Teacher Unions and Education Systems Around the World looks at unions in 11 different countries. The chapter on England, written by Susanne Wiborg, an academic at the UCL Institute of Education, is forebodingly titled “The End is Nigh?” and offers a bleak assessment of the country’s unions.

“In striking contrast to organised teachers in Europe and the USA, the teacher unions in England have had a substantial amount of power removed from them during the last 30 years,” Wiborg writes.

Sidelined unions

She argues that this has happened for two reasons - because England’s unions are “highly fragmented”, and because the way Britain’s political system is set up has allowed governments to ram through changes that have sidelined the unions.

Unlike in the US, where political power is dispersed and there are multiple “veto points” where bills can be blocked, if a UK government has a reasonable majority, it can easily get its legislation through Parliament.

This has allowed governments to push through “institutional changes” that have left the English teacher unions “weakened and marginalised”, Wiborg argues.

Once, the unions helped to formulate education policy and set teachers’ pay through national bargaining. However, during the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, they were pushed out of the political inner circle and had their power “brutally cut”.

‘Lack of clout’

They were further weakened by successive Conservative and Labour governments fragmenting the unions’ ability to deal with employers by taking power away from local authorities with the creation of grantmaintained schools, academies and free schools.

If that wasn’t bad enough, their “lack of clout” has been “compounded by the fact that the unions are highly fragmented”, the book claims.

There are currently five main teaching unions in England. Wiborg argues that they have been “notoriously incapable of mustering powerful alliances” (though there may be signs that they are trying to change this - see box, right) and have “found themselves in conflict with each other” over policy, tactics and recruiting members.

In particular, she says the teacher union movement in England is still “haunted” by the secession from the NUT in the 1920s of the National Association of Schoolmasters and National Union of Women Teachers (which later merged to form the NASUWT).

Some of the unions appear to agree with this aspect of her analysis. In March, the NUT and ATL teaching unions voted to merge to form a new “superunion”: the National Education Union (NEU).

Kevin Courtney, the NUT’s general secretary, has said a “multiplicity” of unions in England has made it easier for the government to dismiss them, and “in countries where teacher unions are more united, generally they have more voice”.

Wiborg agrees that the NUT-ATL merger could increase union power in some respects. “They can probably pose more threats or disruption,” she says. “They can maybe be more powerful to forge links with other unions or social movements.”

However, she says their influence will nevertheless continue to be constrained by the British political system.

Unsurprisingly, teacher trade unionists aren’t taking Wiborg’s argument lying down.

Norman Crowther, a national officer at ATL, believes that consistently high union membership among the teaching workforce and the formation of the NEU “directly contradicts the idea that there’s a decline” in trade union power.

“Forming the largest education union in Europe would suggest to the contrary that trade unions are alive and well,” he says.

No regrets?

Crowther also points out that the unions have been able to wring concessions from government, for example over pensions in 2011.

However, if we accept the premise that union power in England has declined, is it a cause for regret? Terry Moe, the academic from Stanford University who co-edited the book, suggests not.

He argues that teacher unions have globally been the “prime opponents” of educational reform over the past few decades. They represent a “vested interest” that has opposed accountability and school choice all over the world because it threatens the “job interest” of their members.

Most controversially, he claims that they attempt to block reform “even if the changes are good for kids”.

Moe says he’d much rather raise a child in a system like England’s with a “government that can actually take action”, rather than in the US, where he says underperforming schools have been shielded from reform by the country’s mighty teaching unions for three decades.

“These kids are having their lives ruined… the problem is, we can’t do any big reforms because they get blocked.”

Governments won’t always get things right, Moe says, but if they can take action they can also “fix and adjust” when they make a mistake.

Crowther thinks Moe’s analysis is “seriously, misguidedly oversimplistic”, and says the idea that “reform is inherently a good thing” is wrong.

“The book’s arguments tend to present an overly one-sided picture,” he says.

Other teacher trade unionists are likely to reach a similar conclusion. But the book also contains some uncomfortable truths for them that are unlikely to go away.