Writing in The TES, National Union of Teachers general secretary Doug McAvoy lists moving towards a “500,000-strong union for all teachers” as one of the four top priorities for 2002.

At the NUT’s annual conference in April, Mr McAvoy predicted unification within eight years. But he told The TES this week that it could come sooner than that.

Unification talk has been fuelled by the new spirit of co-operation among the unions in recent months, particularly in the current negotations with ministers on workload.

Eamonn O’Kane, who is set to take over from Nigel de Gruchy as general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers at Easter, is an enthusiast for moves towards unity.

Both men point to the fact that for the first time this year, there has been a joint approach on workload and salaries. In the spring, the NUT, NASUWT, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the Welsh union UCAC passed a joint resolution calling for a 35-hour week.

There have also been joint submissions to the School Teachers’ Review Body and to the current workload review.

Mr McAvoy told The TES: “We think that the conditions are the most positive that they have been for a very long time.

“Although there have not been particular moves to go for unity or particular triggers being pulled, who knows what might happen in 2002?” Mr O’Kane made the same point in an article for the NASUWT newsletter, Teaching Today. “It is hard not to conclude that a sea change may be happening to the previously sometimes fraught relationships between the TUC teaching unions,” he wrote.

However, the ATL was more cautious. Gerald Imison, deputy general secretary, said: “The case still needs to be made, and more strongly than it has been so far, that there should be a move towards one union.”

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