Polanski pledges education overhaul and union support

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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Updated: 1 April 2026 20:33

Polanski pledges education overhaul and union support

3. ‘We need to end the Ofsted era’

5. ‘Zack speaks more for schools’

On 31 March, Green leader Zack Polanski gave a landmark speech on education reform to the National Education Union’s annual conference in Brighton.

His stated ambitions were wide-ranging, including massive uplifts to education spending, resisting the forced transfer of our school system to an academy model, and abolishing the Ofsted inspection system.

The speech also marks another stage in Polanski’s fulfilment of a left-wing promise — he’s speaking and listening to our trade unions.

Green-union alliance

In an interview with the Times, on the same day, Polanski stated that he’s actively courting the unions Labour has let down. He said:

When I became Green party leader I said I wasn’t here to be disappointed by Labour – I’m here to replace them. And a crucial part of that is connecting with the organised labour movement.

Historically, most trade unions have been very strongly linked to the Labour party but that link is starting to break as it becomes clear the Labour party is no longer the party of working people.

Since becoming leader I’ve had lots of really fruitful conversations with key union figures, and it’s clear that many people in trade unions are feeling really let down by this Labour government and are ready to work more closely with the Green party.

As part of that move, Polanski addressed the National Education Union today—making him the first Green leader to do so. Standing before the attendees of the NEU’s annual conference, he spoke of education being:

pushed to the brink by the toxic twin pressures of ideologically-driven reorganisation, and an unforgivable squeeze in budgets.

‘Chronically underfunded’

Likewise, he recognised schools’ need for a “serious cash injection” — funded, of course, by a wealth tax:

The UK currently invests approximately just 4.1% of GDP in education, below the OECD average of just under 5%. That puts us significantly behind top-performing countries like Iceland, investing 5.6%, and Norway at 6.2%.

This section of his speech, in particular, drew a standing ovation from the crowd—and little wonder. This aligns directly with the NEU’s criticisms of Labour’s education strategy, which has consistently tried to force schools to do more with less.

In fact, at the same conference, NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede stated that:

Our nation’s schools have been chronically underfunded for more than a decade. Today, 74 per cent of schools have less funding than in 2010. The consequences of this are clear for all to see — larger class sizes, burned out teachers leaving the profession, and buildings literally falling apart.

Children with SEND have been failed for too long by a system buckling under the strain of a lack of resources. This cannot be resolved by cutting corners or small cost saving measures. Reforms to SEND provision need to be funded properly – including to pay for additional staff – if they are going to be successful.

‘We need to end the Ofsted era’

Beyond the underfunding of the education sector, Polanski also set his sights on the “fail, toxic” institution of Ofsted:

We need to end the Ofsted era entirely and move towards a genuinely collaborative model. One that connects teachers on the frontline with local experts – specialists in pedagogy, child development and social care – we must make sure teachers have the support and guidance they need to meet the needs of their pupils.

This mirrors the NEU’s own ‘Abolish Ofsted’ campaign. In particular, the union has criticised the government’s reforms for increasing inspection pressures and workloads for staff.

Likewise, the union also cited the psychological toll of Ofsted inspections for already-overworked staff. They cited the example of Ruth Perry, the headteacher who took her own life after an inspector rated her school as ‘inadequate’ in 2023.

Resisting academisation

In his speech, Polanski then moved on to the issue of the ‘academisation’ of schools, calling academies:

Another failed model pushed on to teachers and children by previous governments’ ideological drive to marketise our children’s education. And the results have been stark: a fragmented system with poor accountability, allowing academy CEOs to be paid enormous salaries while pay and conditions for their staff worsen.

Research into the impact of academisation on learning has found no positive impact on the attainment and progress of pupils in multi-academy trusts, compared to other schools. And in fact, in larger multi-academy trusts, particularly secondary schools, the results were worse.

Again, this is directly in line with calls from the NEU itself. In particular, the union highlighted the high level of dissatisfaction among teachers at Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs).

Using a Freedom of Information request, the NEU found shocking levels of turnover at MAT schools:

Last academic year, large MATs saw 1 in 5 teachers leave their jobs and more than 1 in 9 teachers leave the teaching profession entirely. This compares poorly with local-authority maintained schools, where over the same period 1 in 7 teachers left their jobs and 1 in 11 teachers left the teaching profession.
Among large MATs — defined as those containing at least 21 schools – the rate of leaving the profession has remained consistently higher than in other governance structures over the past 10 years.
Free schools and academies have higher rates of teachers leaving the profession than local-authority maintained primary, secondary, and special schools.
Among large MATs, several had retention rates of 75 per cent or lower at the end of the 2022-23 school year, meaning that at least a quarter of staff left schools in those MATs.

‘Zack speaks more for schools’

Given the fact that the Greens are clearly listening to and learning from the NEU’s research, it’s unsurprising that Polanski’s speech was so well received.

In fact, general secretary Kebede indicated something of a sea-change within his union. Whilst he acknowledged that over 60% of NEU members voted for Labour in 2024, he stated that: