Teaching unions are guilty of a great betrayal

Telegraph

4 hours ago

What is the point of trade unions? Do they exist to stand up for the interests of their members or are they really there to pledge solidarity with Gaza? This is what members of the National Education Union (NEU) are increasingly asking themselves.
The NEU was formed in 2017 from the merger of the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. The latter was the major union operating in the private sector and, thus, the NEU has over 34,000 members teaching in independent schools.
Ampleforth College, Charterhouse School, Christ's Hospital, Merchant Taylors' School, St Mary's School Ascot and Winchester College are among the leading public schools that recognise the NEU for collective bargaining purposes.
The NEU leadership may not be entirely delighted with this situation. Whilst the NEU and the other main teaching union, National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), are not affiliated to the Labour Party, the far-Left have long had a dominant presence in the former and are fast replicating this in the latter.
Daniel Kebede, the NEU general secretary, is an avowed Marxist, who has spoken on Socialist Workers Party platforms. Much to the anger of some of its members, Matt Wrack, the acting general secretary of NASUWT, is a fireman, not a teacher.
He headed up the far-Left Fire Brigades Union – they disaffiliated from the Labour Party in 2004 in opposition to Tony Blair and only rejoined in 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn became leader – for 20 years before being challenged and defeated.
Wrack is a past member of the Trotskyist Militant tendency.
The NASUWT has moved a long way in its 100-year-plus history. It is one of the few organisations operating today that was set up with an explicitly sexist purpose, as the history of the union by Nigel de Gruchy, its former general secretary, sets out.
During the First World War, as men went to fight, more women became teachers. The NAS part of the union was set up to demand that the returning men should not have female superiors, and that pay differentials between the sexes be maintained (the UWT part of today's union was only set up when that battle was lost).
Perhaps in our era where apologies for past wrongs are so popular, it is time for NASUWT to take the knee and make amends. After all, the Garrick and other formerly men-only clubs were not set up to do down women. This union was.
The NEU's conference this year had time to pass motions condemning Israel. Last month, the union supported a 'Nakba 77: workplace day of action for Palestine' and a 'solidarity' march. Its actions have been anything but 'behind the scenes'.
When Wrack was asked about his support for Corbyn and Labour's anti-Israel turn, he acknowledged with admirable understatement that he 'would not describe [himself] as a Zionist'. Whether Britain's teaching unions can really do much to achieve Middle East peace may be rather in doubt.
But there is an issue which affects every one of their members teaching in the private sector – VAT on school fees. This Labour imposition will mean some of these members will lose their jobs as schools close.
But what it will inevitably mean for many more teachers is that their conditions of employment will worsen, or at the very least, not improve as they would have done without it.
While some schools including Eton have passed the full 20pc levy on to parents, many more have tried to ameliorate the full impact of Labour's onslaught. To balance their budgets, these schools will inevitably have to cut costs elsewhere. This will certainly mean that pay increases will not be as generous as they would otherwise be.
It will also undoubtedly lead to more independent schools leaving the Teachers' Pension Scheme. Historically, most independent schools have been part of the state's generous, pay-as-you-go unfunded scheme.
Back in 2012, the employer contribution to the pension scheme was 14.1pc. Michael Gove as education secretary then hiked the cost, and this year it has reached 28.68pc. This is largely a charge on the independent schools who are members of the scheme as, for state schools, the contributions are paid for by the Government and it is really just a matter of churning.
Private schools have already been planning to leave the unaffordable scheme – it led to industrial action at the Girls' Day School Trust in 2022, the first independent school strikes in memory. But many more will be heading for the exit.
So there can be no doubt that VAT on school fees is a direct assault on the interests of members of the teaching unions.
What did the NEU do about it? They stated that whilst their focus rightly was on 'protecting members' jobs and conditions', they would not be campaigning against the move. Their excuse was that 'independent schools have their own influential lobby'.
Not nearly influential enough, as it turned out. The schools failed to resist Gove's pension raid in 2012 and have achieved nothing to ameliorate the full impact of VAT and the scrapping of mandatory business rate relief for those schools with charitable status.
In contrast with its attitude to Palestine, the NEU has stated that it could best 'use our influence behind the scenes'. The Labour Government's Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill – reversing many of the Tories' laudable education reforms and constraining academies and free schools – shows that this influence is indeed great.
That Bill could almost have been dictated by the NEU. But over VAT? Nothing. It is as if the union leadership is so blinkered by socialism it does not have time to stand up for its members.