By the numbers: Superunion packs a bigger punch

As the NUT and ATL teaching unions vote to merge, here’s how the new National Education Union will measure up

24th March 2017, 12:00am

The ATL and NUT teaching unions have announced that they will merge to form the National Education Union (NEU).

The new superunion will be formed on 1 September.

In an exclusive first interview with Tes earlier this month (bit.ly/Superunion), Kevin Courtney, general secretary of the NUT, said that the new union would be “speaking for a majority of all teachers”.

One of the biggest unions

The merger of two of the teaching profession’s largest unions will make the NEU one of the country’s largest unions. Based on the latest official figures from 2015, the number of paying members in the ATL and NUT would have stood at just under half a million (456,758).

That would make the NEU the fourth biggest union in the country after Unison, Unite and the GMB.

In Scotland, the country’s main teaching union, the EIS, had a total of 52,833 paying members in 2015, according to the latest figures.

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