The government’s schools White Paper will “entrench failings” in education, the leader of the Green Party told teachers today.
Zack Polanski set out his vision for schools at the NEU teaching union’s annual conference in Brighton, after Vlog revealed earlier this month that he would be the headline speaker.
Recent showed that support for the Labour Party had fallen sharply among NEU members, from 60 per cent in 2024 to 18 per cent in 2026. This survey suggested that the Green Party is now the most popular party among the union’s membership.
The Green Party and the NEU are currently aligned on several proposed policies, including abolishing Ofsted, opposing academisation and ending statutory testing.
Speaking today, Mr Polanski described academy trusts as “another failed model pushed on to teachers and children by previous governments’ ideological drive to marketise our children’s education”.
He said that “this government came in promising to fix the failings in the system, but the new schools White Paper would entrench them”.
Specifically, he rejected the government’s ambition - as set out in the White Paper - of “forcing every school to join an academy trust when we know that this model weakens accountability to local authorities, parents and the local community, [and] what is really needed is proper resourcing”.
School funding at ‘breaking point’
Mr Polanski - the first British politician to appear on stage at the NEU’s annual conference since Labour’s Bridget Phillipson was heckled in 2022, before she became education secretary - warned that school funding is “stretched to breaking point”.
He told NEU delegates: “Government after government has lavished praise on teachers, on the value of your work - and then refused to pay you properly.”
He was speaking as the sector waits for the Department for Education to publish its response to the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendations for teacher pay.
Mr Polanski added that if politicians want to say that “education is the backbone of this country”, they need to “start acting like it”.
He warned: “We are not expanding opportunity in this country. We’re shrinking it.”
In its , the Green Party pledged to increase school funding to £8 billion and to provide £2 billion for a pay uplift for teachers.
Mr Polanski said that when he is asked questions about how the party would increase funding, “the actual real question we should be asking is this: how can we afford not to make this investment?”
‘Crisis of childhood’
The Green Party leader also raised concerns about the cost of living, which he called a “crisis of childhood”.
He said: “When I speak to young people about the issues that are facing them, that are stopping them from learning, from realising their potential, they’re familiar problems: problems with their housing - cramped homes, having to move a lot, damp and mould; not being able to afford the things they needed - lunch, books, resources.
“It breaks my heart to think of the children and young people who in 2026 could have their lives changed by education in the way that I did, but are right now having those doors slammed in their face because governments refuse to find the money.”
Another Green Party manifesto policy is to end “high-stakes testing” at primary and secondary schools.
“Time and time again, teachers try to raise the alarm about how detrimental endless testing is for pupils; how it narrows their horizons, harms their wellbeing and fails to properly measure their ability and progress,” Mr Polanski said.
He criticised the government for keeping all primary school testing in place, and also for planning to introduce new reading assessments in Year 8 that will put “more pressure on pupils and teachers”. Today NEU delegates voted to .
Abolishing ‘toxic’ Ofsted
The Greens’ 2024 also stated that, if the party came to power, it would abolish Ofsted.
Mr Polanski repeated this pledge today, describing the school inspection body as “a toxic, failed institution which is harming teachers and children”.
He described the government’s reforms to school inspection, which include scrapping single-word judgements, as “simply tinkering around the edges”.
“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,” Mr Polanski said.
