Teachers in the English and Welsh State education system have experienced a changing and turbulent relationship with the State in recent decades. This article adopts a historical analysis and argues that the concept of "partnership" is key to understanding the relationship between teachers and the State in the period since the Second World War. Initially a partnership based on a commitment to welfarist values, professional autonomy and collective bargaining; this has been systematically dismantled and reconstructed as a "social partnership" based on teacher union involvement in workforce reform coupled with a significantly more managerialist conception of professional accountability. Re-engineering the terms of its partnership with teachers has been central to the State's restructuring of public education along neo-liberal lines. (Contains 75 footnotes.)