Mary Bousted

The Baroness Bousted
Official portrait, 2025
General Secretary of the National Education Union
In office
1 September 2017  31 August 2023
Serving with Kevin Courtney
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byDaniel Kebede
President of the Trades Union Congress
In office
14 September 2016  13 September 2017
Preceded byLiz Snape
Succeeded bySally Hunt
General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers
In office
7 April 2003  1 September 2017
Preceded byPeter Smith
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Assumed office
27 January 2025
Life peerage
Personal details
Born
Mary Winefride Bleasdale

(1959-09-15) 15 September 1959
Bolton, England
Political partyLabour
Spouse
Donald Bousted
(m. 1983)
Children1
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisA Socio-Political Analysis of the Personal Growth Ideology of English Teaching (1999)
Academic work
Institutions

Mary Winefride Bousted, Baroness Bousted (née Bleasdale; born 15 September 1959), is a British trade unionist, educator and life peer. She was the joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) from 2017 to 2023 and previously the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) from 2003 to 2017.

Born to teachers in Bolton, Bousted worked as an English teacher in London. After moving into higher education, she ran teacher-training programmes at various universities. She became the general secretary of the ATL in 2003 and, after its amalgamation with the National Union of Teachers to form the NEU, subsequently served as the joint general secretary of the NEU alongside Kevin Courtney. She served as the president of the Trades Union Congress for 2016–17. Bousted was appointed to the House of Lords as a Labour Party life peer in 2025.