Teachers and education professionals know, more than anyone else, that something needs to change in their professional lives.

The stress of enormous workloads is driving teachers from the profession. In England, less than half of the profession has 10 years’ teaching experience. Meanwhile, teacher recruitment targets have been missed for the past five years - two unpalatable trends noted by the School Teachers Review Body (STRB) in its latest report. 

The situation is so bad that the STRB gave the government a stark warning: “We are deeply concerned about the cumulative effect of these trends on teacher supply. We consider that this presents a substantial risk to the functioning of an effective education system, particularly in the context of increasing demand for secondary-phase teachers and specialists in EBacc subjects.”

The STRB’s strong language, and particularly the words “a substantial risk to the functioning of an effective education system”, is, in my experience, unprecedented. The Review Body has told Justine Greening that unless the recruitment and retention trends are reversed, the quality of education will suffer.

And there is more: the “pressures of high workload and strict accountability” are, according to the STRB, “clearly major causes of teacher wastage”. But the STRB also identifies teacher pay as another important factor and notes: “The evidence shows that, on average, starting pay and the prospects of pay progression are worse for teachers than for those joining other graduate professions. This makes it more difficult to attract suitable graduates to join, and remain in, the teaching profession.”

The STRB has got it bang on the button. The toxic mix of excessive working hours, which results in teachers working more unpaid overtime than any other profession, and the stress caused by an inflexible and unfair accountability and inspection regime, makes too many teachers’ and leaders’ working lives impossible. And as the pay of multi-academy trust CEOs comes under the spotlight, education professionals add dismay around unfair and excessive CEO pay to their other concerns at a time when staff pay rises have been limited to 0 per cent or 1 per cent and when education is so underfunded that jobs have been lost, the curriculum reduced and class sizes increased.

All of which leads to one conclusion: things have to change in our education system. We need a game-changer and, from 1 September, that game changer is the National Education Union (NEU).

Formed from an amalgamation of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the NEU, with over 450,000 members, will be the largest education union in the UK, with members working in primary and secondary schools, in the state and independent sectors and in post-16 and further education colleges. Members of the National Education Union are teachers, lecturers, support staff and school leaders and college managers.

The National Education Union understands just how closely education professionals work together and just how much they rely upon each other to provide the best education possible for children, young people and adult learners.

Let’s make education a great place to work

So the NEU will stand up for the future of education. It will be committed to making education a great place to work, with sustainable workloads, attention to wellbeing and a collegiate approach. It will make education a great place to teach which values and promotes professional expertise, learns from relevant data and is backed by an inspection system which strikes the right balance between holding schools properly accountable for the education they provide,and working in a collaborative, professional way, sharing good practice so that the standards of education rise for all.

The NEU wants schools and colleges to be great places to learn - providing a broad curriculum to motivate students, enabling them to develop their interests and skills.

By championing everyone who works in education, through organising, supporting, advising and representing staff, both individually and collectively, advocating good pay and working conditions, and providing quality continuing professional development (CPD), the National Education Union will empower professionals to inspire generations, cultivating a love of learning which is assessed in a meaningful way.

The NEU will fight for a fairly funded education system. One with enough qualified and continually trained teachers and education professionals, working in well-maintained schools and colleges. One with enough places for every learner at every level which will provide an education which enables children and adults to engage fully with the world around them, enriching their lives.

These are strong and bold ambitions, but the new union will be a force to be reckoned with. We will not only pose challenges, but we will also provide answers to complex questions. How, for example, can schools be held to account for the quality of the education they provide in ways which do not narrow the curriculum and drive the joy of teaching and learning out of the classroom?

The NEU will have the resources to challenge received orthodoxies and to propose new ways of looking at the education world. Strong on scholarship and research, and a major provider of CPD, we will work to strengthen the education system and improve the quality of education.

As the largest union in the majority of schools, the amalgated union will make a difference in every workplace, as well as nationally.

There is much to do, and the NEU has its sleeves rolled up to take on the challenge, with major campaigns on school funding and workload ready to roll from this month.

We will not be daunted by the challenges ahead. We are confident that our members - informed, committed education professionals - want to do more for themselves, with the support of their union. Together we can make the change that is so badly needed in the world of education.

For more information, please visit www.neu.org.uk or follow the NEU on Twitter @NEUnion

Mary Bousted is joint general secretary of the National Education Union. She tweets as @MaryBoustedNEU

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