In September the National Union of Teachers published research from the think-tank Demos, which concluded that teaching was becoming an unsustainable profession. In May, the outgoing Education Secretary, David Blunkett, admitted that his main regret was that he had failed to raise teacher morale and announced that the workload review could consider changes to contracts.

Estelle Morris, as incoming Secretary of State therefore, inherited both a crisis and the means to do something about it. Her recent speech, “Professionalism and Trust”, suggests that a change in Government attitudes is indeed on the agenda.

Scientists say that evolutionary change is erratic, with rapid and uneven change leading some species into evolutionary backwaters. The same process appears to be taking place in education. What looked to be radical two months ago - the “vision” set out in the education White Paper which set the tone for the new Education Bill - now appears to be yesterday’s news. Ms Morris’s speech at one jump moves from the stifling debate about the restructuring and organisation of education and focuses on what teachers do in the classroom. Now teachers matter.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers’ report, while providing a welcome description of the causes of excessive workload, now appears timid in its ambitions compared to the scope of the Government’s remit letter to the School Teachers’ Review Body on workload. Even more of an abrupt jump is the unprecedented move of a Government seeking consensus with teacher organisations and employers.

As a result the review body has now been instructed to find a way of providing “a meaningful guarantee of professional time for marking and preparation”. It has at last acknowledged that the legal trigger for excessive workload, the notorious clause 59.8, which envisages a teacher will work limitless additional hours, must be radically overhauled. Thus the Government could be in the business, at long last, of tackling Demos’s disturbing conclusion.

As for the nature of the evolutionary dead ends in Government policy, it is worth consulting the latest publication by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, What Schools for the Future? It contains a fascinating description of alternative scenarios for the future. One describes a future where the market model is extended, leading to a growth in “demand-driven market currencies, indicators and accreditation and greater inequality”.

In contrast, another scenario, which the OECD obviously prefers, depicts schools as “core social centres” characterised by high levels of public trust, alongside “greater social equity” and “greater organisationalprofessional diversity”.

That the Government is still drawing on the market scenario, with a continuing obsession with targets and private-sector experiments, indicates that it is still pre-occupied with a model which the OECD suggests should suffer the same fate as the dodo.

So what will be the nature of change in 2002? Will the profession be able to move from, as Demos puts it, “a never-ending barrage of externally imposed, randomly timed and badly managed initiatives” to shaping change? If that is to happen, the Government must work with teacher organisations as partners. We, in turn, should not be afraid to lead the debate on how the roles of teachers and support staff can be defined.

Second, we must move to a 500,000-strong union for all teachers with the resources and capacity to stand as an equal partner with government.

Third, the Government must shift from imposing change to providing the conditions for change.

Fourth, the Government must stop tinkering with the organisation and concentrate on establishing a quality assurance framework which leads to support, not to denigration.

Fifth, teacher organisations must be less timid about welcoming those aspects of change which enhance teaching and learning. The Government, in turn, must recognise that it is the teacher organisations which have the greatest capacity to understand and expound teachers’ views.

Finally, back to the contract. Teacher organisations and the Government have created an unparalleled opportunity to shape contracts in a way which can return a sense of professional ownership and control.

There is now a real possibility that between now and the next comprehensive spending review - due in July - the employers, the teacher organisations and the Government will present a united case to the Chancellor on the need to fund improvements in teacher numbers and to contracts.

There was a third OECD scenario - that of “meltdown”. With the employers, the teachers’ organisations and the Government working together, that doomsday scenario can and must be avoided.

Doug McAvoy is general secretary of the National Union of Teachers