The National Union of Teachers spent more than £326,000 on campaigning in the run-up to last year’s general election.
Figures published by the electoral commission reveal the NUT declared campaign spending of £326,306 in the year to June 8 2017, which is the commission’s “regulated period” for last year’s election.
Education, and in particular concerns about cuts to school budgets, became one of the most prominent issues during last year’s campaign, helped in part by the popular School Cuts website.
The site, which is still running, allows users to search for any school in the country and find out how much money each one stands to lose as a result of cost pressures and flatlining budgets.
Kevin Courtney, the NUT’s general secretary, said the union, which has since joined with the ATL to form the National Education Union, said the money spent had “delivered results”.
“Our election spending was on the successful school cuts campaign which made school funding a high profile election issue, changed 750,000 votes at the election, and resulted in the government stumping up another £1.3bn for schools in July,” he said.
The NUT was one of just two non-party campaigners to declare election spending of more than £250,000. The other was the Best for Britain campaign, a pro-EU group.
Today’s figures also show that the Conservative Party, which lost 13 seats last June, spent more than £18.5 million. This was £7.5 million more than Labour, which spent around £11 million.
More to follow.
Your thoughts