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Members of England’s biggest teaching union think Bridget Phillipson has done worse as education secretary than Sir Keir Starmer has as prime minister, according to a poll.

Some 74 per cent of teachers and support staff surveyed by the NEU teaching union said that Ms Phillipson was doing either “quite badly” or “very badly” as education secretary, while 70 per cent said the same of the outgoing prime minister.

Just 9 per cent believe she is doing well.

Meanwhile, 72 per cent of respondents said Labour has performed badly on education, with the union’s general secretary calling for “new leadership” at the Department for Education.

News of the survey came shortly before Sir Keir Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister and Labour leader this morning.

Labour ‘worse than expected’

The NEU commissioned Deltapoll to survey 4,131 NEU members earlier this month.

Two-thirds of those polled said Labour has performed worse in office than they expected.

Only 5 per cent believe that Labour has performed “fairly well” on education issues, and no respondents were recorded as agreeing that Labour has performed “very well”.

The NEU also released details of a YouGov poll of 755 Labour members, which showed that 45 per cent would most like to see Andy Burnham as the next leader, while 24 per cent continued to back Sir Keir Starmer and 4 per cent wanted Wes Streeting as leader.

Earlier this year NEU members indicated that they were prepared to take industrial action over pay and school funding.

The union has since said that it will launch a formal ballot for industrial action unless the government makes a fully-funded, above-inflation pay offer. The DfE is yet to announce its teacher pay award for 2026-27

Daniel Kebede, NEU general secretary, recently told ����Vlog that the union had a “record” number of ongoing local disputes, primarily over redundancies and restructuring.

Call for ‘new leadership’ at DfE

Mr Kebede said: “NEU members want change and we cannot afford another generation of children bearing the brunt of austerity-level school budgets, and expecting leaders, teachers and support staff to do more with less.”

He added: “Bridget Phillipson’s promised 6,500 extra teachers have failed to materialise. She has been reduced to creative accounting in order to talk up historic lows in recruitment and deny the continued crisis in retention.”

His concerns over Labour’s flagship workforce pledge come after statistics showed that the number of teachers working in schools in England had fallen by 1,900 in a year.

Mr Kebede added that the Labour Party needs a “fundamental change of direction, starting with education”.

He said: “That means new leadership at the top of the party and new leadership in the Department for Education.”

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