Andy Burnham needs to fix the crisis in our schools

At the last general election, the British public voted overwhelmingly for change – real, tangible, and immediate change. They voted for an end to austerity. They did not elect a Labour Government to merely manage the further decline of our social fabric. They expected a government that would repair our hollowed-out public services and confront the cost-of-living crisis felt by millions.

If Andy Burnham becomes the next Prime Minister he has the chance to change that. It is a limited chance and voters will watch closely. His challenge is whether he actually delivers or is seen as simply delivering more of the same. He must show that a Labour Government he leads can tackle grotesque levels of inequality, create jobs and offer hope to millions of people who may be giving Labour its last chance.

The Government’s commitment to real change will be judged in education as elsewhere.

For more than a decade now, teachers, support staff, pupils, and their families have endured an ideological experiment defined by austerity, outsourcing, and privatisation. The physical infrastructure of our school estate is literally crumbling in many places, while the workforce holding the entire system together has been pushed to breaking point.

The NASUWT’s Where Has All the Money Gone? report exposed the grim mechanics of one element of this crisis. It showed how billions of pounds have been diverted away from frontline education into layers of private contractors, supply agencies, consultants, and to bloated academy chief executive pay packets. 

Where education is delivered and makes a real difference, classrooms are too often left without the basic resources children need. Schools frequently rely on teachers and parents to plug the gaps from their own pockets.

I believe the electorate wants an end to this marketised hollowing-out of the state. If the new Prime Minister is serious about changing the life chances of children and young people they must recognise that you cannot build a fair and dignified education system on the cheap. 

You cannot run schools on the exploited goodwill of unpaid labour, nor can you expect teachers to deliver excellence in buildings that boil in the summer and leak and freeze in the winter. Anything less than long-term, sustained investment is simply managing the decay of the status quo.

But money alone will not fix the structural failures. There are also profound, transformative changes that will cost the Treasury next to nothing, yet would fundamentally improve the lives of teachers and their pupils.

First, we must restore national pay and conditions. The fragmentation of the school system through mass academisation has created a deeply unfair two-tier workforce. Teachers are doing the exact same jobs, under the same pressures, but can work on very different terms and conditions depending on who they work for. 

A coherent, publicly accountable education service requires a single national entitlement that applies to every teacher in every state-funded school. This is not only fairer but it is the foundation of democratic accountability in public education.

The next priority must be to dismantle the toxic, broken pay-progression system for teachers. Formally linking pay to performance management has achieved nothing but the creation of an oppressive bureaucracy, deep staff resentment, and a culture of fear. 

Restoring automatic pay progression would immediately boost retention, stem the tide of early-career departures, and restore the professional dignity that has been systematically stripped away.

Workload is consistently listed by teachers as one of the biggest drivers causing them to leave the profession. It must be tackled as a priority. Teachers are drowning in endless data entry and administrative tasks that add nothing to a child’s learning. Addressing this crisis does not require a vast funding package. What it does require is political will, a reduction in the over-surveillance of teachers, and meaningful, collaborative negotiation with trade unions – including a national workload agreement – as the NASUWT has long called for.

We must also confront the quiet catastrophe unfolding in our Special Educational Needs (SEND) provision. The current system forces vulnerable children to wait months, sometimes years, for essential specialist assessments while classroom teachers are left stranded without resources. Every school must have immediate access to external specialist staff and emergency funding.

Ultimately the next Labour Prime Minister must confront the failed experiment of marketising the education of our children. The obsessive push to force every school into a multi-academy trust has consumed vast amounts of public money while delivering next to nothing for pupil outcomes. A simple but powerful message would be sent by reversing this decision.

We must rebuild an education service that is democratically accountable to local communities, parents, and families – not run in the interests of corporate academy chains, their chief executives and consultants.

The teaching profession has shown extraordinary patience and through their dedication has shielded our children from the worst impacts of state neglect. 

But that reservoir of goodwill is empty. For Andy Burnham this is a moment to stand with working people, with our communities, with every child who deserves better than managed decline. Teachers and other school staff have carried this system on their backs for too long. 

If Labour truly believes in change, now is the time to prove it with action and not slogans. 

Our schools cannot wait, our children cannot wait, and the Trade Union movement should not wait.

Matt Wrack is general secretary of NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union

Thumbnail image credit: Jess Hurd/NASUWT

Header image credit: Scottish Government – Creative Commons