NEU conference 2023: Full text of Bousted and Courtney’s speeches

Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney have delivered their last conference speeches as general secretaries of the National Education Union.

Here’s the full text.

Dr Mary Bousted

This will be my last speech as the joint NEU General Secretary so I hope you will forgive me if it is a little personal.

I qualified as an English teacher in 1982, three years into Margaret Thatcher’s and her Conservative Government’s first term. Keith Joseph was Secretary of State for Education.  

My experience of teaching in the 1980s was one of struggle and hardship. My second school was in the poorest part of the local authority. Pupils came to school hungry, and in winter they came to school cold – because Margaret Thatcher’s austerity policies were making poor parents poorer.

I taught in a school, now rebuilt under Labour’s Building Schools for the Future, which had been opened in the 1950s. It used a lot of concrete – including painted pressed concrete floors, which were in an advanced state of disintegration. My classroom had a widening gap, measured every three months, between the two outside walls. Ivy grew through the gap. The rain came in, the damp came in. The windows were rotting. The notice boards were riddled with asbestos.

Teacher pay had fallen in real value. As a newly qualified teacher, and as a member of the NUT and a school rep, I struck for fair pay for teachers. I got used to marching in London, feeling the comradeship of my fellow teachers – striking for dignity and for the work we did to be recognised and rewarded. 

Funny, isn’t it, how the past repeats itself.

Here we are again. With another Conservative Government – 13 years in office. 

Here we are again, as we were after Thatcher and Major’s Government, left with a crisis in public services – a crisis borne out of neglect, out of mismanagement, and out of a disgust that Tory politicians have for people who work in public services.

The crisis is all around us. People are walking away from public service:  40,000 vacant nursing posts; 9,000 doctor vacancies; 8,000 social work vacancies.

And in schools, teacher vacancies are 93% higher than before the pandemic and 37% higher than at this point last year.

You know, the Government, at least the last time I checked – the Government does not have the power to command graduates to work in public services. This may have changed. Given the Government’s Rwanda policy, I wouldn’t put it past them.

But if you can’t force graduates to work in public service, then you have to do something to make being a nurse, a doctor and a teacher an attractive choice for graduates. 

It comes to something that even Amanda Spielman, in her last report as Chief Inspector, has noticed that there is a ‘workforce crisis’ in our schools – and even Amanda Spielman has noticed, because she can no longer ignore the fact, that children are bearing the brunt of that crisis.

Children with special needs not getting the support they need.

Children who are so vulnerable that they are assigned social workers, meeting those social workers on Teams – because they are agency social workers who may live hundreds of miles away from their homes and their schools.

CAMHS waiting times lasting months. Children and young people with severe mental health problems not making the cut for a CAMHS appointment because the service is completely overloaded.

So, Amanda Spielman is right – there is a workforce crisis in our schools, and children are bearing the brunt of that. 

But it’s not just the children, shameful though that is, that are bearing the brunt of the workforce crisis.

It’s those who stay fighting the good fight – the teachers, and leaders and support staff who stay in schools, trying to support children and young people, trying to teach them and help them learn – who bear the brunt of their colleagues leaving the profession. 

It makes their work even harder. It makes them even more exhausted.

So many schools are running on skeleton staff. Unable to recruit. When they advertise for teaching posts there are no candidates applying.  Losing support staff because they can earn more stacking shelves in a supermarket.

Now, Gillian Keegan – the latest in a long line, five this year, of Tory Secretaries of State for Education, who seem to be only tangentially connected with the reality of what is going on in schools. Gillian Keegan is airily unconcerned about all of this. 

When Kevin and I show her the evidence of teacher flight from the profession, she dismisses it with a wave of her hand. There’s a shortage of workers throughout the economy, she says. Teaching is not a special case, she implies. It’s not as bad as you say it is, she responds.

Gillian – I have to tell you, you are deluded. You are living in a fantasy world. You are Secretary of State for Education – it’s your job to ensure that there are enough teachers and leaders and support staff in our schools. It’s your job to make the strongest case to the Treasury that education needs funding so that our schools can recruit and retain teachers and support staff. And to make the working lives of teachers and leaders better, so that they are willing to stay in the profession.

Do your job, Gillian.

Because the anger that the profession feels is not down to Kevin and Mary. Gillian, it was not Kevin and Mary’s strikes. 50,000 teachers on the 15th March marching through the centre of London was not down to me and Kevin.

It was down to teachers who struck and marched for their profession and for the children they teach. 

In between the selfies I talked to members on the march. They are clear. Things can’t carry on like this. 

And marching with their union, with the NEU, collectively, they are saying enough is enough. Pay our profession properly for the vital, essential work it does and fund education so that we can do the job we know needs doing. 

Let us build an education system fit for the 21st century – not on AI. Not on state-controlled curriculum materials.

Let us build an education system that is funded so that children can fulfil their potential to learn.

Let us build an education system that is not starved of teachers and leaders and support staff.

Let us build schools which are not dilapidated and dangerous.

Surely these demands are reasonable?

What parent does not want these things?

It is because parents want these things that the Government has not been able to drive a wedge between teachers and parents. 

If we are to win this dispute – and win we must – we must keep parents on side. They must believe that we are fighting for their children’s right to education. They must know that in fighting for our profession, we are acting in their children’s interests.  We must not lose that trust.

I also want to say something about Ofsted because it’s been a bit of an obsession of mine for a long time. 

When I began my critique of Ofsted over two decades ago, it was a bit of a lonely place to be amongst the education commentariat. 

My firm belief that Ofsted was then, and is now, an invalid and unreliable regulator whose inspection judgements are unreliable – dependent on the team who arrives at the school gate – was seen as ‘out there’. 

It wasn’t respectable to talk about Ofsted in this way. I was an unreasonable polemicist.

The ground has been moving under Ofsted for some years now and has been the work of many like-minded people and organisations. But it took an untimely and tragic death of a head teacher, Ruth Perry, to cement in the public mind that we cannot carry on. We cannot carry on with Ofsted.

So, today, I make a public plea to those school leaders who work as Ofsted inspectors.

I ask them to stop it. Concentrate on your school. Refuse to be part of an inspection team until we have an inspectorate which commands respect, which supports schools to improve. As inspection systems do throughout the developed world.

Only in England, now, do we have such a punitive and toxic inspectorate. 

One which drives teachers away from the profession.

One which makes teachers and leaders lives a misery.

Surely it is not unreasonable to want these things?

And now I am coming to the end.

So, I want to finish with this:

Five years ago, after long and detailed negotiations, ATL, the union which I led as General Secretary since 2003, and the NUT, amalgamated to form the NEU.

And Kevin and I became Joint General Secretaries.

Everyone warned that it would not work. Everyone said that mergers were brutal and it would take ten to fifteen years for the NEU to perform, never mind storm.

And look at us now. A union with over 500,000 members. The third largest in the TUC. The union which has the largest social media footprint of any union, which regularly speaks directly to thousands of members through its zoom meetings. A union which has 50,000 members marching through London standing up for their profession.

A union which campaigns on the issues that members care about – on pay and workload; on child poverty; on inspection; on assessment; on health and safety in the workplace. Where our members are, so are we.

We are the NEU. We are magnificent.

And throughout those five years my constant professional companion and friend has been Kevin. I know now, that to NEU members I will always be linked with Kevin – in Kevin and Mary texts and emails and videos. On the marches, if I had a pound for every member who asked me ‘Are you Mary from Kevin and Mary?’ I would have collected a small fortune.

I want to say that working with Kevin has been wonderful. I have learned so much from him.

How to campaign; how to engage with members; how to keep at it, through thick and thin, to convince others of your case.

The difference between the median and the mean. How to interpret the evidence in scientific papers which was essential during covid.

Kevin has been a great teacher to me. He is a great friend to me. He lives his ideals of anti-sexism and anti-racism, of equality for all, every single day. And he has always treated me as a valued equal.

Together we have been united to lead the NEU. If we have disagreed, we have done so in private. No one has been able to put a cigarette paper between us in public.

Kevin has supported me in the causes which are dear to me. I hope that I have supported him too. He is a great friend. A great leader and a great campaigner for education and social justice. It has been a privilege to work with him.

I am going to stop now. I will miss you all. There are things to do in the rest of my life – difficult though it seems now, there will be life beyond the NEU.

So, thank you. For your work for the union, on behalf of your members. 

Never forget that the NEU is member led.

And be proud of your union. Because I am.

Thank you.

Kevin Courtney

Conference

They said the amalgamation couldn’t work.

They said five years of Joint General Secretaries couldn’t work.

But in the last five years the NEU has grown more than any other union, has held the biggest union meeting in UK history, and has become one of the most influential trade unions in our country.

The NEU, your union, won billions for school funding in our campaigns from 2017 to 2019.

The NEU, your union, made schools and communities safer in 2020 and 2021.

The NEU, our union, built for ballot success in 2022, and is leading the movement in 2023.

We are leading the campaign for investment in this generation of children.

We are leading the fight for funding and for fair pay.

And whilst doing those things we’ve also built outward looking campaigns on Ofsted, on primary and secondary assessment, on free school meals and child poverty.

And we’ve produced our anti racist framework, a sexual harassment toolkit, the LGBT+ inclusion charter, our disability toolkit, the Agency Workers Rights tool, and so much else.

We’ve trained people on these tools.

And we keep going.

We’ve just released an important report on the adultification of Black girls in response to the Child Q scandal.

And don’t forget we held the biggest ever strike in private schools in the Girls’ Day School Trust. We challenged ‘fire and rehire’ at many more independent schools.

We are a social justice union and an industrial union.

And, Conference, through all of those things Mary and I have worked together.

I always knew we would.

We worked together in 2011 on the pensions strikes.

We worked together in 2016 on defeating Nicky Morgan’s pompously named Education Excellence Everywhere – in reality an attempt to forcibly academise all schools by 2022.

Well, they weren’t all academies by 2022.

We defeated her by mobilisation in 2016 so she abandoned the Bill, and by resistance on the ground since.

And Mary has brought so much to all of this.

She has enormous drive, passion and a huge capacity for hard work.

As she said, on the very rare occasions when we disagreed, we did so in private and worked out what line we would take.

We considered the unity of our union to be a huge prize – central to its ability to be ambitious and to win change for the future.

Mary’s passion has been to build a union that can change the future of education, and in particular to change the future of Ofsted – to a very short future indeed.

And her passion and bravery on that has been a delight to see in meetings with Ofsted, and ministers, where she has challenged them robustly over the reliability and validity of Ofsted’s judgements and much else besides.

None of them can compete with our Mary in knowledge, drive or passion.

Conference, change is going to come on school accountability. It must come and it will come because of all of us in the NEU and in other unions.

But if there is one person who will be entitled to feel she played a singular role in that collective effort, it is Mary. 

When that change comes it will be a tribute to Mary’s passion and determination.

I will treasure these years of working with Mary forever.

Because you can see the benefits.

Look at us now.

Look at us over Covid, over pay and funding.

Look at us now. Staff, activists and the mass of members all pulling in the same direction.

A real sense of unity throughout the union. Staff regardless of which predecessor union they were in, activists regardless of which predecessor union they were in, regardless of which faction or none they are in, all pulling together.

And it’s fair to say, getting outstanding results.

From the preliminary ballot 62% turnout, 86% for action – at that time the best turnout we’d ever got in either predecessor.

To the formal ballot, the biggest single ballot in any union for decades and certainly since those disgraceful thresholds came in.

To the 57,000 who have joined us since – you are so very welcome in your union.

To the fantastic engagement with the strikes on February 1st – with so many brilliant demonstrations around the country, from the big demos in London, in Newcastle, in Bristol, in Brighton, in Manchester, in Coventry and Birmingham, with smaller but so vibrant demonstrations from Leamington Spa to Hastings to Worthing and on and on.

The demonstrations you organised led to great coverage in local newspapers as well as national and regional TV.

And then you, staff and activists alike, organised those brilliant regional strikes with great demos and with increased picket lines.

I personally loved being in Leeds and Cambridge and Chichester.

And then you organised to get 50,000 NEU members to the biggest weekday demonstration for years, despite a Tube strike.

It was such a celebration of teacher determination, solidarity and joy.

And engagement isn’t dropping.

Just look at that amazing turnout of 66% with 98% rejecting in under six days.

We should all be proud of this level of member involvement in the union.

But we should stop and reflect on how and why we have that engagement – because it isn’t an accident.

Mary and I are both proud of our role in that mobilisation. But we aren’t fundamental – it is you, the union activists, that are fundamental. Both in your activity in the here and now and in the longer-term strategies you have set.

The trigger for the mobilisation was the huge increase in inflation. But your determination and dedication and your collective decisions and strategies, decided here at conferences past, were absolutely vital to our ability to respond.

✅ Your collective decision to amalgamate.

✅ Your collective turn to building and supporting reps, in schools, colleges and MATs. Fantastic reps like Sarita and Andrew who we heard from on Tuesday.

✅ Your decisions to invest in and build the tech to support reps, like our reps dashboard and NEU Activate.

Be proud of those decisions you made.

Be proud of staff who helped us as well.

✅ It’s also the way we’ve all listened and reached out.

✅ We’ve listened to members concerns and inextricably linked pay and funding of pay.

✅ we’ve reached out to NAHT and to ASCL – it was so good to have Paul Whiteman here yesterday.

✅ And we’ve consciously reached out to parents: in 2017 on school funding; during Covid on safety and on free school meals, and now, again, on free school meals, and on parental concerns about staff vacancies and funding in their children’s schools.

Those decisions, those strategic choices have built:

✅ increased rep numbers;

✅ built campaigns supported by the vast majority of members; and

✅ cemented our outward looking approach.

We’ve won a funded pay rise in Wales.

We’ve forced the reopening of pay in England.

And we are going to win both funding and a pay rise in England.

The Government is clearly rattled by our campaign, so rattled that it is reacting foolishly.

Yesterday Paul Whiteman told you about a story in the TES, where a DfE source said:

“NAHT seem determined to raise the temperature. Last week, they threatened to sue Ofsted. Now they are accusing Government of turning their backs on children. You expect this sort of rhetoric from NEU not NAHT.”

Well, that’s a tribute both to NEU and to NAHT.

But this sort of reaction is badly misjudged, just like the offer was badly misjudged, just like Gillian Keegan’s interview on Sky was badly misjudged, just like the constant repetition that inflation is falling – as though that means prices are falling – and the constant repetition that the offer is funded when it isn’t fully funded are badly misjudged.

They are not reading the room.

Conference, the Government may need some reading recovery from the teachers and the teaching assistants.

Because they really should be worrying about your capacity to campaign, to win parental support, to pressurise politicians.

Now we intend to win this campaign next term.

Mary and I and rest of you in conference will be leading from the front on that.

However, Mary and I have only five more months and it is just conceivable we might not win on our watch. But you are going to win – I have every confidence in that.

And if you need to, you will organise the biggest demo Manchester has seen for decades on October 2nd and carry on a campaign right into the General Election year.

And you will win.

Conference, I started teaching in September 1983, I’ll retire 40 years later in September 2023.

I was a school rep in 1984. I’ve been at every union conference since 1986, and I’ve devoted myself to building my union and the struggle for education constantly with my best friend Alex Kenny as well as so many others of you.

Alex and I have always had fun building the union.

I’ve always had fun and I’ve always been proud of my union.

But I’ve never been prouder than now – of our outward-looking, campaigning union.

We do great work on anti-racism, for refugee rights, on anti-sexism, for LGBT+ rights, against childhood poverty. 

We do great international work. We show solidarity with other unions in struggle.

We are an industrial and a social justice union.

And I am so proud that our union, the NEU, is truly building an education union.

A union of teachers and support staff.

A union that can act and organise in the interests of teachers, in the interests of support staff and the children they serve.

These are great traditions to maintain, and I have huge confidence you will maintain them.

Treasure these traditions, your traditions.

Build the anti-racism we do, by building our union.

Build our anti-sexism by building our union.

Build our LGBT+, our disability and our international work by building our union.

Ask not what the union can do for your section; ask what your section can do for the union.

Keep looking outward.

Keep a high moral purpose.

Be confident that we have a strong progressive united union.

Be confident in yourselves and your determination.

Be confident in our union next term with me and Mary.

Be confident in our union in the autumn, and beyond, with Daniel and Niamh.

Keep going, because you will win for education.

You will make the change teachers, support staff and students need.

You will replace Ofsted, win on free school meals.

You will win on pay and funding.

Keep going.

Keep going.

And thank you so much for so many great years.