Latest updates: Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of National Education Union, says union hopes to ‘reopen negotations’
In her interview on the Today programme this morning (see 9.19am), Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, criticised the presenter, Nick Robinson, for suggesting that one of the candidates in the election for the next NEU general secretary is an extremist.
Robinson said that Bousted was not right when she said not teacher wanted to disrupt exams, that some extremists in the union did favour these tactics, and that one of them was the man likely to succeed her as general secretary. Robinson did not name him, but he was referring to Daniel Kebede.
I think this is quite outrageous, actually. You’re you’re bringing what is a really serious issue about the future of teachers, about the current state of teachers in the classroom, down to personalities. I think that is really base and it demeans the programme. I’m really sorry. you’ve done that, Nick.
We need a strong and united union that can make that case, one that fights and wins on the issues that matter to our members, one that boosts pay, reduces workload, wins on funding and one that reclaims education for educators and for our children.