Parents could be the deciding factor in the teachers’ strikes

Industrial disputes are, more often than not, battles for the support of the wider population – those who are not directly involved. Both sides know that if the Court of Public Opinion finds against them, then usually their cause is no longer sustainable. Capitulation follows.

This was true of even the most famous union campaigns. All the way back in the 1980s, for example, once the National Union of Mineworkers’ general secretary Arthur Scargill had become a public hate figure, Margaret Thatcher knew she was onto a winner.

And so the National Education Union – whose members provide an essential, national public service, just as those feeding coal power stations did 30 years ago – needs to beware, as it prosecutes its campaign of school closures in a bid to win better conditions for teachers, that it will be the non-combatants who will decide the outcome.

This much is not exactly an original thought – indeed I wrote something similar only a few weeks ago – but what is new is that we can now begin to get a sense of where the public stands on this hugely important issue. Are they with the teachers, or are they behind the government?

Polling recently carried out by Public First, where I am a director, can start to give us an answer to these questions, just as the country stares down the barrel of a rolling set of strikes in the month ahead, including in Wales next week.

Our survey found that the general public is marginally against the teachers’ cause, with 43 per cent saying their action is justified and 47 per cent not.

It is crucial in this winter of discontent to contrast this figure with the other professions taking action; our poll found sympathy for nurses to be much higher, with 59 per cent of respondents backing their pickets, while just 36 per cent were behind the railworkers.

But buried within our data is an even more important number: the support for strikes from the 14 million parents of school-aged children.

This stat is super-important, because this is the group whose opinion is most likely to decisively shift. Those who are largely unaffected are unlikely to be persuaded to change their position. But if, on the other hand, you’ve had to cancel a load of important work meetings for the fourth or fifth time because of the need to look after your kids at home, there is a high chance it will really begin to grate.

But what we found was slightly counter-intuitive – and definitely important. We found that currently parents are, in fact, more likely to back the strikes than their non-parent neighbours (by 47 per cent to 40 per cent).

Why then would the group most affected by the strikes be the most supportive?

There are probably two interwoven reasons. The first is baked in: that, unrelated to the strikes, the younger you are, the more likely you are to lean left politically. If most parents are in their late-twenties through to their late-forties, they are much more likely to sympathise with the unions than their boomer parents are.

The second point is more subtle, and perhaps even harder to prove: I believe that, possibly because of Covid, parents these days feel a stronger sense of common cause with their kids’ teachers. Perhaps more pronounced at primary level than secondary, there is certainly a tie between mums and dads and their school in a way that there may not have been before the pandemic. Communication channels are better, and there is a greater understanding (thanks to home education) of just how difficult being a teacher really is.

Parents are, in short, predisposed to believe teachers when they explain how stressful their job is, and how badly recompensed they are for it. So far so good for the unions.

But what the leaders really need to take away from all this data is that this industrial dispute is in the balance. It could go either way. If they are careful in their communications and keep telling their story – just as their members seem to have done to the parents of their students – then they could win the battle for the hearts and minds of the public. They must also be at pains not to test the patience of the mums and dads who currently believe their cause is righteous.

But there is also clearly enough in our polling to suggest to Conservative ministers that if they can hold the line and wait for the strikes to become more and more arduous, the views of voters could begin to turn definitively against the teachers.

There really is everything to play for.