It’s conference season, and the papers are full of talk about more teachers’ strikes. Nothing’s decided on that front – although the chances of Michael Gove suddenly starting to listen must be vanishingly small – but while we’re fully supportive of the unions in opposing his dangerous ideology, and most parents are just as suspicious of his agenda, the unions must still tread carefully.
Being in opposition to Gove is a very good start in generating public support, but it’s important to remember that this is not a positive endorsement of either the teaching unions or their tactics. Being the enemy of my enemy doesn’t necessarily guarantee my support, as demonstrated by teachers’ reactions to some of Tristram Hunt’s recent statements. If unions want the sort of backing that puts more scrutiny and pressure on Gove, they need to build positive alliances, starting with parents.
The success of industrial action is determined by public relations as much as inconvenience to Westminster, and this puts teachers in a difficult position, because parents, their most natural allies in defending education, are also the people who are hardest hit by strikes. Every strike is an inconvenience for us – we may need to take a day off work ourselves to look after our children, or else pay an eye-watering sum of money to a childminder. A strike can cost parents just as much as teachers, but without any say in whether it happens, which is why we must be persuaded of the necessity of strikes if the PR battle is to be won.
The #standup4edu campaign is an excellent and potentially gamechanging initiative, but it isn’t a magic bullet – it needs constant work to engage and inform parents about why teachers are so angry and why Gove’s so dangerous, and goodwill can be lost in an instant with an ill-advised comment.
There was an example of how not to do it on The Today Programme this morning. Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary, was asked why the union are talking about further strike action, an open question inviting her to put the union’s case in her own words. Her response began like this:
Well, the threat of strike action is part of a much wider campaign that we’re engaging in at the moment, Stand Up For Education, which is about engaging parents to make sure that they understand what education policy is about and putting pressure on politicians, but the specific issues are the issues that we’ve been dealing with, with the government for some time on pay, particularly on workload and conditions, and of course on pensions.
Frankly, this is a PR disaster. For all the talk of engaging parents, the main points which are mentioned all amount to teachers wanting more pay for less work – don’t we all? There are plenty of reasons for strike action, and some more of those were mentioned later on, but this was a golden opportunity to build a broad support base, and it was wasted.
There’s an widely-accepted aphorism that everything before the word “but” is a lie. In this case, it could be said that everything after the first sentence is a lie – it certainly won’t be given the same weight. Rightly or wrongly, anything that isn’t mentioned immediately in this context is assumed to be a secondary issue at best, or it would have been mentioned earlier. By the time those issues are raised, most listeners will already have made up their minds, many of them forming negative opinions of the union argument.
When people are feeling the pinch, it’s hard to make the case for a pay increase, especially when that increase would come out of their taxes. The Coalition have been very effective in divide and rule tactics, and while some will support a pay rise on principle, the more common reaction is likely to be a scoffing “we’d all like more money, but I haven’t had a raise either, so why should I pay for it?”
Unions may feel that people shouldn’t think this way, but that’s a long and troublesome argument to win, and a diversion from the immediate problem. The pragmatic PR-savvy response is to exploit this inclination towards self-interest, showing that children are suffering as a result of Gove’s reforms, and teachers are standing up against this.
It’s easy to play the armchair quarterback, but we would have preferred the response to begin more like this:
We are considering strike action because Michael Gove’s education reforms are making our job impossible and directly harming children’s education. Rather than teaching children, we’re being expected to spend more and more time on bureaucratic paperwork, and having to intensively prepare children for tests which are purely for administrative and monitoring purposes. We don’t want to strike, but Gove refuses to even meet us to discuss our complaints, so we don’t have many options.
There’s plenty of room for raising the issues of pay and pensions later on, along with any other grievances, but this sets the scene with teachers standing up for our children, as opposed to standing up for themselves. That’s the way to build support outside the profession.
Unions – when you’re making statements about industrial action, please consider how they will come across to unengaged parents. Try thinking of us as honorary associate union members if it helps. We want to Stand Up For Education, and we want to rescue our children from Gove’s demented ideology, but this is an ongoing project, and it won’t be helped by the appearance of self-interest.
Parents 4 Education 