ABSTRACT
In recent years the work of schoolteachers in English and Welsh State schools has been subject to considerable restructuring, often presented in the name of workforce reform or ‘workforce remodelling’ (Ball 2008, Butt and Gunter, 2007). Signifi cantly, the focus of the debates about remodelling has not been restricted to teachers, but has extended to the whole of the school workforce, and there has been suggestion of nothing less than the ‘transformation’ of the traditional roles undertaken by both teachers and support staff in schools (DfES 2002). Workforce remodelling has been seen as a key initiative in the continued drive to raise school standards through the more effective and effi cient deployment of labour in schools, whilst simultaneously addressing problems of teacher recruitment arising from excessive teacher workload. School workforce remodelling, and the ‘new professionalism’ agenda for teachers that emerged from it (Rewards and Incentive Group 2005), have had a substantial and signifi cant impact on the subsequent development of schools, and the work of teachers. This volume provides an exploration of the policies associated with workforce remodelling, and wider issues of workforce reform in schools, and locates these in the broader context of neo-liberal State restructuring and New Labour’s commitment to ‘modernise’ public services. Specifi cally the work has two broad aims: fi rst, it provides an assessment and analysis of recent development in teacher trades unionism and school sector industrial relations in England. It does so by exploring teacher union engagement with the policy of workforce remodelling and offering an analysis of how teacher unions both shape policy and are shaped by policy. Second, the work seeks to make explicit connections between the way teachers experience work (the labour process of teaching) and developments in the strategy and form of teacher trade unions. This volume thereby avoids a narrow focus on teacher unionism as an activity disconnected from the realities of teachers’ work, linking developments in teacher unionism with school teaching as a very specifi c form of work.
