NEU conference 2025

rs21 members in NEU produced three leaflets for the education union’s annual conference in Harrogate

1. Arms companies out of schools!

BAE systems is one the largest arms companies in the world and currently producing plane parts used to bomb schools and universities in Gaza. 

What is little known is the significant ‘STEM washing’ from arms companies in schools through roadshows and job fairs for students. Many cash strapped schools not able to fund outreach activities may jump at the opportunity to have a ‘large employer’ deliver enrichment activities free of charge. In exchange, arms companies can normalise their existence within the British economy as a source of graduate employment, economic growth and grotesquely, a social good.  

However companies profiting from bombing workers in the global south should not be tolerated by the workers movement. Trade unions in Gaza have called for solidarity action from British trade unions and this must involve driving arms companies out of the education system. 

In my own school, BAE systems had planned to deliver a workshop for Year 8 students. Our workplace rep petitioned workers in our school demanding the arms company not step foot in our school. Over 50 workers had signed the petition and the workshop was immediately dropped with a commitment to make ‘ethical considerations’ when inviting outside agencies to our school.

This experience shows anti-militarism is an effective organising tool to build solidarity between workers in the global north and south. It’s also a clear riposte to those suggesting trade unions should only focus on ‘jobs and working conditions’.

Trade unionists in this country have a responsibility to combat militarism in our workplaces – an excellent first step would be getting involved with the ‘Disarm Education’ campaign so we can develop a coordinated and winning strategy.

Disarm Education are providing guidance, resources, and coordination to people wanting to take action against the presence of arms companies in their workplaces. Conference should also support Motion 34 on Palestine and amendment 34.3 on official affiliation with Disarm Education. Delegates can learn more about how to get involved at their open meeting on Monday the 14^th April (8pm) in the Bronte room at the Crown.

For more information and to get involved, visit: disarmeducation.org

2. To Save Our Schools, we need more than a few per cent

We must acknowledge that beating the turnout threshold in this ballot has been harder than before. It has been harder than 2023, when the Government didn’t think we could do it, and harder than 2024, when elements of the union bureaucracy aimed to block it. The question we must grapple with is why?

There will be many at NEU Conference who are habitually against action – either politically or because it is hard work – who will argue that this shows that educators are apathetic. This couldn’t be further from the truth – most educators care deeply about their work. So why didn’t the ballot connect with them as it had before?

There are some reasons that are beyond the control of ourselves – the general feeling this year is very different to 2023. In 2023, other public sector unions were out on strike too and people felt like they had the government on the run. Fast forward to 2025 and the situation seems much more bleak. Austerity 2.0, delivered courtesy of Starmer’s cabal, is attacking the fundamental welfare that people rely on to live while repeating Tory arguments about the economy. At the same time, the US slides further into a chaotic decline that is generating monsters of its own. The general outlook is not good and we must acknowledge the effect that this has. Indeed, the ballot itself is an attempt by many in the union, from top to bottom, to shift that dial and create a new situation – that was and is the right thing to do.

There are, however, lots of reasons for the difficulties around this ballot that are within our control. The first is a weariness from some members and Reps about the process. We’ve had a lot of ballots over the last few years and only once have these resulted in strike action. Action has been curtailed, paused and eventually sold out. We had the arguments around the now discredited 6.5 per cent (remember the Doctors who got 13 per cent?) and last year’s argument at Conference that we shouldn’t move to a formal ballot and see what the new government gave us – that same government is now giving us austerity and boasting about ending strikes.There is a lack of confidence amongst some Reps and members that the ballot means something and that it will actually make a difference.

That lack of confidence is down to a lack of vision and strategy. The union’s messaging about the ballot has focussed on common denominator slogans and bland calls to use your vote. This doesn’t match the reality of what educators are facing in their classrooms every day. Instead of arguing over a few percent – or the funding of that few percent – we need, as a union, to articulate a different vision for education; one that argues for a significant increase in classroom funding, full pay restoration and maximum class sizes. No-one else out there will make that argument for us and we must make that argument if we are going to articulate the crisis as experienced by many educators. There is no other way to fix the recruitment and retention crisis or the workload crisis.

This will require a shift at the top of the union. It will mean breaking with a Labour government that is simply offering more and more cuts and austerity. It will require taking on key arguments about why Defence spending is pegged to GDP but education isn’t. It will mean that we will face criticism from the right wing press. But failing to put forward a different vision for education will reduce us to arguing for crumbs, a few percent here and there, even as we watch the education crisis burn down our schools and leave our pupils abandoned. We need to start now with this shift, so that Reps and members are ready with the arguments for when we ballot again.

Key Demands for Transforming Education

Pay restoration to 2010 levels within 3 years.

An increase of 20 per cent in individual per pupil funding.

Legal class size limit of 20 pupils.

A single pay spine for teachers and support staff, negotiated directly with the DfE.

Removal of all national testing.

A commitment that education funding will be 5 per cent of GDP.

3. An Injury to Support Staff is an Injury to All

The National Executive of the NEU has agreed a deal with the NJC unions (Unison, GMB, and Unite) that stops us organising support staff. What does it commit us to? We must: “take no action that could be regarded as organising activity on behalf of support staff” (Paragraph 55); “not pursue recognition on the school support staff negotiating body”(principle 2); “that industrial action constitutes organising activity”; “to seek agreement from NJC unions before undertaking industrial action” (principle 6). This agreement limits the ability of the NEU to organise its members and to take industrial action. It directly contradicts motion 36 which was agreed at the 2023 conference.

The National Education Union is the only union in Britain that organises all school workers. The strongest fighters for democracy and workers rights in my district have always been support staff. It would be a betrayal of them, 60,000 support staff members, and the principle that National Conference is sovereign, to accept this deal. 

We must keep organising all the workers in our schools and colleges. By organising industrially it increases the power of our union and makes it harder to divide us. An industrial union is a necessity because support staff are always the first to lose their jobs and suffer pay cuts in restructures. Opposing this is in the interest of all school workers, as a basic point of solidarity, and because it will worsen the working conditions for those staff that remain. This deal explicitly limits our ability to do this.

The deal seeks to prevent us organising our members and negotiating with employers.  The result will be that the NJC unions may keep the money they get from their support staff members, while continually failing to get over the ballot line. They are using every tool at their disposal to block the NEU gaining recognition for Support Staff. Whether that be their relationships with MATs and the Labour Party, or the structures of the TUC. We must hold to account those who prioritise relationships with these unions over the rights and interests of support staff members.

This deal must be rejected. It explicitly prevents us from organising our support staff members. Some say that rejecting the deal will mean that we will never gain recognition for support staff and that we will be expelled from the TUC. This reveals a difference in strategy. Our strategy is for an industrial education union for all education workers, regardless of membership in the TUC or whether or not we are officially recognised. It is worth remembering that we are not officially recognised by the government to negotiate on teachers pay and conditions! We can win recognition, like in any other industry, only if our membership grows. There are a million school support staff not in any union. A fighting NEU should be their home.

On membership in the TUC, the idea that the government won’t recognise us unless we are a member union unnecessarily concedes ground to the NJC unions. Trade union recognition can be fought for and won. Like in any other industry, we force them to recognise us by our strength and our action, not by membership in an extra layer of bureaucracy that has not challenged the British state in the 21st century.

So how do we build a fighting industrial union? 

At a district and workplace level we must act like an industrial union. In Bristol we have led joint teacher & support staff strikes, with a joint list of demands. During national teacher strikes in 2023 and 6th form teacher strikes in 2024/25, we organised hardship funds for support staff who refused to cross picket lines. We have recruited reps who are support staff in many of our schools, and brought them into positions of leadership within the district. All of this taken together has strengthened actions, increased member confidence, and improved union density across the city – particularly among support staff. Now over 20% of Bristol’s members are support staff. If this is replicated across the NEU, the NJC unions and the government will have to listen.

Nationally, we must campaign for recognition on the School Support Staff Negotiating Body and renegotiate our agreement with the NJC unions. Conference already agreed in 2023 that Support Staff must be involved in this renegotiation. We must use all of our influence in the NEU to make it clear that we want a union, and a union leadership that fights for support staff. To do this we must organise rank & file members to fight for our democratically agreed policy. We must make it clear to union leadership that if they won’t fight we will elect someone who will. 

Trade unions have often needed to strike for recognition, sometimes even against their sister unions. To be effective we need to build support staff presence and confidence in the rank and file, and subordinate the National Executive and the officers of the union to the membership so that they will fight to the end for all our members, not just teachers. 

It is a classic phrase in trade unionism that an injury to one is an injury to all. It’s high time that the NEU stands by this principle.