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National teachers union slapped with ASA ad ban for 'unsubstantiated' claim

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By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

January 14, 2015 | 2 min read

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) has had a press ad banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for featuring "unsubstantiated" claims.

The ad for a job vacancy recieved one complaint from a reader who challenged whether the ad was misleading because they understood the National Union of Teachers (NUT) had a larger membership than the NASUWT.

Defending the ad the NASUWT said it believed the claim was completely accurate and that it would be partly understood as a reference to the geographical reach of the NASUWT within the UK. T

The trade union added that the NUT does not operate in Scotland and Northern Ireland and accordingly it did not cover half of the UK, whereas the NASUWT operates in all countries of the UK. Because of this the union said on a geographical basis alone, the NASUWT "had a claim" to be the largest teachers' union in the UK.

NASUWT claimed that the reference to "teachers'" in the ad would be understood by consumers as a reference to 'practising' teachers only and that because the NASUWT had only practising teachers as members and those numbers exceeded those of the NUT, this therefore further supported the "largest" claim.

Despite this the ASA ruled that the claim would lead consumers to believe NASUWT was bigger than any other teacher's trade union operating in the UK, and because evidence was not submitted to demonstrate that the NASUWT had more members than the NUT it considered the claim had not been substantiated and concluded that the ad was misleading.

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