Education’s new power duo, Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, have managed an impressive feat simply in persuading their organisations to merge together. Now that the National Education Union (NEU) has formally come into being, the hard work for the pair really begins.

Can it really be a game-changer? The joint general secretaries talk about the new “superunion”, their hopes for the NEU and how they intend to navigate the choppy political waters ahead.

The education policy landscape has changed since the general election. For example, grammar expansion is now off the table. What are the NEU’s key priorities over the next six months?

Kevin Courtney: “It feels like the old consensus - that Sats, league table and market methods are the only way forward - is an idea that’s run out of time. The new union will engage with all the political parties to see if we can accelerate the breakdown of that consensus, because it isn’t good for our members.

“The funding crisis - there were some small moves by Justine Greening in the summer - but the essential problem is still the same. Schools are going to find themselves without enough money and that’s going to remain a priority.

“And then the overwhelming, unchanging reality for all teachers of workload, which is too high. The bits that teachers think are too high are the bits that aren’t helping kids - they’re about accountability gone mad.”

Mary Bousted: “Kevin and I are really ambitious and we’ve both said that the NEU will be a game changer. We want earned autonomy to be returned to teachers so that they can make effective decisions based on evidence about what they think is important in their work, rather than being slaves to the accountability drivers.”

You highlighted funding. Justine Greening announced an extra £1.3 billion over two years, but you’ve said that’s not enough. Where do you take your school funding campaign from here?

KC: “We’re waiting for the next stage of Justine Greening’s announcement in September, where she will reveal what each individual school’s budget will be if the national funding formula was introduced in a hard way.

“Once it’s out, we will update the School Cuts website so that we can show the real-terms cuts that are being proposed. We will have a lobby of Parliament during the autumn half-term break.

“There is an opportunity for change because there is a budget in November. We think Justine Greening wants more money for schools, but she has the difficulty of getting the chancellor into that position. In many ways, he’s the target - we want to get MPs who have schools that are in difficulty to write to Philip Hammond.”

If there’s nothing in the Budget, could you see a point where national industrial action would be necessary?

MB: “We’ve got conferences in April. We think that funding will be an issue on the agenda and you would never say no to looking at all forms of action.

“It was a massive achievement that education funding matched the NHS in terms of voter concerns at the last election - school funding changed 760,000 voters’ minds.

“I think our campaign demonstrated that providing information to parents is extremely powerful. It’s not industrial action, it’s information that persuaded the government to put the extra £1.3 billion in.

“My view is that if you’re looking at education funding, the power of information, campaigning and the moral case you can make is extremely powerful. I think for funding that’s probably a more effective route. I’m not ruling out other action, but I think you build on success.”

The government has made it harder for public sector unions to strike: they now need 50 per cent of members to send back their ballot papers and 40 per cent of members to vote “yes” before action can take place. Will the NEU be able to get the votes?

MB: “There is no doubt that the Tory anti-trade union law has improperly restricted the right of public sector workers to take industrial action. Our response to that is that if you put the threshold that high, we will work to organise.

“I’m certainly not saying there won’t ever be national industrial action again. The issue would have to be absolutely critical and we would have to mobilise effectively.

“I think what we will see is a different way of doing industrial action. We are getting thresholds when it comes to school-byschool action.”

KC: “These anti-union laws are extremely undemocratic. The Brexit referendum didn’t meet the thresholds - it didn’t get 40 per cent of eligible voters in favour of Leave. So you can leave an institution you’ve been part of for 50 years but we can’t call a one-day strike that our members don’t have to take part in on the basis of the same vote.

“It’s possible to reach those thresholds at a national level - they’re disgraceful, but it’s possible to reach them. ATL and NUT reached them in 1992 in a Sats ballot.”

ATL and NUT had distinct cultures. You could see that at the annual conferences, where NUT was more raucous. How are you going to reconcile those differences?

MB: “You talk. Through talking and understanding each other, you find the most productive way ahead.

“Although the union activists might have slightly different cultures and may conceive of themselves differently, if you go into any school, you would not be able to tell the difference between members of ATL and of the NUT.”

KC: “You correctly observe that you can see differences in the conferences. But the word “union” is about uniting people at the workplace. We want a union to bring both of those cultures together - not to reconcile them but to merge them.”

Do you still want to create a single, universal education union?

KC: “That’s the ambition that we have - we want there to be one education union and we have made a huge stride towards it.

“We have been absolutely clear to the NASUWT teaching union that the door is open. We want to work with UCU to get closer and closer and to see how we can take that forward.

“That’s absolutely the ambition that we have. The timescales over which that’s achievable isn’t clear because it takes two to tango.”

With grammars off the table and Justine Greening back as education secretary, is there a chance to reset relations with the government?

MB: “Justine Greening is a very different secretary of state than any of her recent predecessors. She’s serious about social mobility and I do think she’s concerned about the profession - she understands the issues of workload.

“She’s constrained, of course, by her party’s policy and by the policies pursued by her predecessors, in particular Michael Gove. There’s a huge amount of policy that is heading very quickly in the wrong direction. Her problem is that, in the absence of new policies, what’s gone before catches up.

“We try and work honestly and effectively with government, but we have to honestly represent the views of our members and the policies that they have voted for. That isn’t an easy balancing act but we try and do it.”

Finally, you have two prime central London offices, which are worth millions of pounds. Now you’re one union, will you sell one?

MB: “We don’t know yet. That’s a really complex issue. We may move into one - ATL’s wouldn’t be big enough - we may look at a new office, we may keep both.”

KC: “The question is the efficiency with which we use members’ money. We won’t be looking for some great big, self-aggrandising building so the union looks good - we want an efficient space so that we can do work for members.”

MB: “It will not be Trump Towers!”

KC: “Gold-plated taps are not us.”

@whazell