Picket lines, striking teachers egged on by a left-wing trade union, and children missing out on their education. No, not a chapter from a history of the Winter of Discontent, but rather scenes playing out on the streets of Britain in February 2022. It seems that the bad old days of the inner-city comprehensives in the 1970s are back but with a catch: now they’re playing out at some of the most elite girls’ schools in the country.
For Mr S hears that all is not well among the hard-pressed parents of children at the fee-paying Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), a network of 23 independent schools in England and Wales. It educates about 20,000 girls aged from 3 to 18 in London, Birkenhead, Norwich, Newcastle and elsewhere. But now in its 150th anniversary year, as parents prepared to help the group celebrate this auspicious occasion, the mood has soured considerably after the GDST came unstuck on that age-old issue of pensions.
For, last week, for the first time in the GDST’s history, many of its teachers went on strike – with the blessing of the National Education Union (NEU). They gathered at school gates on 10 February to protest. Many of the parents arriving to drop off their charges found staff whooping and chanting to greet the girls – some of whom were clearly confused and upset by this alien scene. Then the teachers scuttled off home, leaving their charges to spend a day at school without any lessons. Five more days of strikes are planned between now and 3 March.
The bone of contention is that GDST establishments, like many private schools, are proposing to withdraw staff from the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS). A 43 per cent increase in employer contributions to the TPS imposed by the government in 2019 has left the independent sector grappling with a sharp jump in employer contributions from teachers’ salaries. The extra cost of this to the GDST is £6 million each year. This increase funded the TPS scheme, but it did not enhance teachers’ pensions. The GDST now advocates an alternative pension scheme made up of a 20 per cent employer contribution.
The TPS is a gold-plated pension scheme with excellent benefits, if limited flexibility. Its chief advantage, at least for most teachers, is that they don’t really need to understand that much about pensions as, when seeking promotion or changing schools or jobs, terms and conditions are relatively straightforward to understand. A teacher earning between £37,919 and £44,961 in England and Wales would expect to make a contribution of 9.6 per cent to their pension with their employer contributing 23.68 per cent. If they have a career average arrangement, a teacher’s pension benefits under the existing TPS scheme will be based on the amount they earn across their teaching career. Each year, 1/57th of the teacher’s salary will be put into a pot which is then indexed annually by Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus 1.6 per cent.
GDST teachers of course work in some of the top schools in the country, with dedicated parents and co-operative girls. They get more than three months’ paid holiday per year. It hasn’t escaped Steerpike’s attention that many who toil in the state sector must surely be casting an envious eye at the better salaries and excellent working conditions of those on the GDST payroll. Yet in an age when many people don’t even have a pension, the NEU has said the GDST’s new pension deal is not good enough: they must down tools.
One disgruntled parent told Mr S that:
The sacred bond of trust that exists between teachers and parents has been lost. By striking, these teachers have shown that the most important thing in their lives is their pension. Teaching – which I had always thought of as a vocation – is, seemingly, secondary. The teachers are prepared to use their pupils to make their point. They are perfectly happy to deny girls their education if that means they can have a slightly better retirement. After the disruption of successive Covid-19 lockdowns, this is a bitter pill to swallow.
Now the question of competence is being asked of the GDST’s chief executive of the GDST, Cheryl Giovannoni, who is currently presiding over this public relations disaster. Some fear that her sympathies appear to have been with the teachers rather than the parents who pay their (and her) wages. So Mr S hears that, thanks to the wonders of modern communication, teachers are not the only ones who are plotting a strike.
For Steerpike is told that parents are co-ordinating their own form of industrial action. A growing band of those with children at different schools all over the country have decided that to withhold the equivalent of a day’s fees for every day that is lost to a strike in future. One told Mr S: ‘We already pay large sums out of taxed income for our daughters to be educated at GDST schools. The idea of paying for them not to be taught is abhorrent.’
Perhaps there is a way out of this for the GDST teachers. If the TPS scheme means so much to them, why don’t they simply transfer to a state school where their pensions will be secure? Surely the GDST will not struggle to find new recruits to replace them. Over to you, Cheryl Giovannoni.
Comments