Extending the right of teachers to be accompanied in workplace disputes

Client: Edapt

Edapt appointed Woburn Partners to help modernise a long-settled area of employment law by extending the statutory right for teachers to be accompanied in workplace disciplinary and grievance proceedings. The aim was simple but ambitious: to widen choice and access to professional support for teachers, in step with the Government’s wider programme of employment reform.

We delivered a fast-moving, integrated advocacy, media and evidence-led campaign that positioned accompaniment rights as an issue of fairness, professionalism and inclusion. We identified two legislative opportunities – the Employment Rights Bill and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill – and ran two parallel but coordinated public affairs tracks. One focused squarely on teachers’ wellbeing and safeguarding; the other framed reform as a sensible modernisation of employment law with benefits across the workforce.

Working across both Houses of Parliament, we built a coalition of supportive MPs and peers and drafted six amendments across two Bills. These were deliberately refined at each legislative stage to sustain momentum, test ministerial responses and keep the issue live throughout parliamentary consideration. Our lobbying was underpinned by original evidence, including a Teacher Tapp survey and an independent equalities impact assessment by a leading legal academic.

Targeted national and education-sector media coverage – including Times Radio, TES and Schools Week – reinforced political engagement. The campaign achieved a major policy milestone, with the Government committing, for the first time in 26 years, to review the law on who can accompany employees in workplace disputes.