So it should come as no surprise that unions are pumping huge amounts of their members' money into an anti-academy, anti-free school campaign. They pay members' travel expenses to attend anti-academy rallies, spread propaganda about free schools selecting pupils (simply not true and not allowed) and spend thousands on flyers in every staff room, giving teachers ideas on fighting a head or chair of governors who may want to turn their school into an academy. The number one item on their agenda is to stop the current revolution of academies and free schools in education. After all, if unions become redundant and lose members, who will pay the union bosses  earning more than £100,000 a year?  

Unions naturally can't say this out loud. Instead, they pretend they are defending teachers and children. They argue that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, is destroying our education system, our values, and an ethos that serves children well. They deny simple facts that prove our education system is failing: for instance, that more than half of our children are unable even to get at least five C grades at GCSE, including English and maths. Even worse, a staggering 84 per cent fail to achieve five C grades at GCSE in the academic subjects specified by Gove's new English Baccalaureate: English, maths, science, a foreign language and either history or geography. These are the core subjects we take for granted that our children are learning at school — yet the vast majority are leaving school without a pass in these exams.

I believe the basic concept of a union is admirable. Unions are meant to protect workers against exploitation. If only this were what modern teaching unions were doing. We teachers sign up for them because we believe they will help us when in need, and ensure our profession is highly regarded. But they keep poor teachers in post, and give us all a bad name by lowering standards. Retaining bad heads also serves the unions because incompetent heads can then exploit struggling teachers (rather than help them to improve) and the unions appear indispensable. The result is that children are left to rot in chaos, the public believes we teachers are inadequate and lazy, and the teaching profession is considered unsavoury by many talented graduates. 

Degrading our profession, as teaching unions are doing, helps neither teachers nor children. If the unions are really keen on protecting the worker, where were they when I lost my job? I suspect that had I given a speech at an NUT meeting rather than the Conservative Party conference, and then been sent home or suspended, they would have been up in arms and marching in the streets. As it is, my union not only did not come to my aid, but waited until a couple of months after I had left my job to get in touch. Then they rang and said: "Now that you're no longer in teaching, shall we just get you off the books?"