Support For Labour Has Collapsed Among Teachers, Union Poll Shows
Support for Labour has plummeted among NEU members since the election (Alamy)
3 min read
Exclusive: Labour's support has collapsed among school and college staff, according to a poll carried out on behalf of the country's biggest education union.
The poll, shared exclusively with PoliticsHome, found that support for Labour among members of the National Education Union (NEU) has fallen by 70 per cent since the July 2024 general election.
The findings come as NEU leader Daniel Kebede warned that conditions have worsened for teachers and others working in education since Keir Starmer's party entered office.
Deltapoll surveyed 3,751 NEU members in England between December 12-15. The poll found that while 60 per cent of respondents said they voted Labour in 2024, 18 per cent would do so if a general election were held tomorrow.
While Labour's popularity has fallen sharply, support for the Greens among members of the education union has risen from 10 per cent to 23 per cent — making Zack Polanski's party the most popular option among this cohort.
The Greens have been on the rise nationwide since Polanski became leader in September, with the left-wing London Assembly Member's growing popularity seemingly coming at the expense of the Labour vote.
Support for the Liberal Democrats among NEU members has fallen from 9 per cent to 7 per cent, according to the poll, while the Conservatives have remained at 4 per cent. Reform UK's popularity rose slightly from 3 to 6 per cent, the same level of support being shown for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's left-wing project, Your Party.
Exactly a quarter said that they did not know who they would vote for if an election were held tomorrow.
The NEU has around 460,000 members across the UK working in schools and colleges as teachers, lecturers, support staff and leaders.
The survey comes as wider public opinion continues to put Labour far behind Nigel Farage's Reform in terms of voting intention, with polls published in recent days putting Starmer's party in third place behind Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives.
Private polling shared with Labour MPs in November, and seen by PoliticsHome, said that half of the party's 2024 vote had gone elsewhere.
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister urged cabinet ministers to ignore polls and keep their "nerve".
"Governments do not lose because polls go down. They lose when they lose belief or nerve. We will do neither," Starmer told the first cabinet meeting of 2026, adding that Labour should prepare for the "fight of our political lives" against Farage and Reform.
In a forthcoming interview with The House Magazine, Kebede said, "material conditions for teachers and support staff under this government have not improved".
"In fact, they've gotten worse. Every teacher I'm talking to at the moment is [saying] we're running on empty. We can't take any more."
While Labour's victory in 2024 was widely welcomed across the education sector, ministers are now facing the threat of teacher strike action later this year over pay and funding.
Kebede added: "Until the government can accept there's a crisis in education, things are not going to get better for them."
Kebede told PoliticsHome last year that industrial action among teachers would be "inevitable" in 2026 unless schools were given more funding.
There has been growing tension between education unions and the government in recent months due to complaints over teacher pay and reforms to the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.
Last month, the Department for Education (DfE) told the teacher pay body that pay should rise by 6.5 per cent over the next three years. Education unions argue that this will not make up for real-terms cuts to teacher pay in recent years.
