Apart from being the most important and only UK teachers’ union representing members in all the devolved nations, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Gibraltar and Ministry of Defence Schools overseas, the NASUWT is very active internationally.

The NASUWT has been elected for the third consecutive time to the Executive of Education International (EI), the worldwide organisation for teacher unions reflecting the global respect the NASUWT is held in. The NASUWT also sends observers to the European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and works closely with the European Trade Unions Congress (ETUC).

The Union plays an active role in the European Work Hazards Network.

International strategy

The NASUWT is committed to supporting trade unions in developing countries abroad. The Union’s National Executive has officially approved support for four nations, Burma, Colombia, Iraq and Zimbabwe, and has hosted and participated in visits to many others, particularly Bahrain. The NASUWT is committed to the ‘Education For All’ agenda and believes that education and a thriving trade union movement are fundamental to these aims.

The NASUWT has also prioritised the Middle East and North African region in the light of the Arab Spring in 2011, with particular concerns over continuing human rights and trade union rights problems in some countries, including Bahrain.

The purpose of the Union’s international activity in all cases is that it should contribute to the following policy aims:

  1. building the capacity of teacher trade unions in other countries;

  2. defending the human and trade union rights of teachers around the world;

  3. achieving the Education Millennium Development Goals, as follows:

    • achieve universal primary education;

    • ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling;

    • promote gender equality and empower women;

    • eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015.

The NASUWT’s international work is crucial in a context in which trade unions are under attack across the world, not only by non-democratic governments but also by many multinational corporations. The international dimension to the NASUWT’s work has become particularly acute now that UK governments have begun to cherry-pick the free market policies and strategies of other countries, including misusing international evidence to back up their own ideological beliefs.

For further information on all the Union’s international work, please see our International pages.