In answer to the question why are they striking I would propose another question – what other option do they have? The government’s position is that Teacher’s pensions are unaffordable and hence the enforced changes to the contributions. I use the word enforced deliberately because there has been no negotiation. If there are no discussions, no negotiations what else can teachers do? The Teacher’s pension scheme is currently in a huge surplus, one of the reasons for this is that teachers, as a profession, have one of the shortest life spans after retirement. Perhaps Teacher’s pensions are unaffordable; excuse my cynicism but I’d prefer to see some proof of that rather than take the government’s word for it.
I can understand the view that it’s unfair that education authorities contribute to teacher’s pensions, but then they are the teachers’ employers. Perhaps what’s really unfair is that private sector employers don’t contribute to their employees pensions to the same (if any) extent. Reading through this thread, the government seems to have spun their case expertly. Instead of questioning why private sector pensions are so poor (thanks to the policies of successive governments, Labour and Conservative) and what can be done to improve them, those with good pensions are pilloried. If my house is a wreck, should I try to fix it up or should I wreck the houses of everybody else? The population is aging, you cannot live on a state pension; getting rid of the few good schemes we have hardly seems to be planning for the future. What do you suppose will be done with the money saved by not contributing to teacher’s pensions? I doubt it will be used to help alleviate the forthcoming pensions crisis.
There seem to be an awful lot of experts on what makes a good teacher in this thread, including some people who I would normally consider to be reasonable posters. For those of you claiming that most teachers are awful; what experience and skills and knowledge do you have (other than having been to school) that enables you to make this judgement? Would you be so keen to make your sweeping generalizations about other professions in which you have never worked? PGCE and other initial teacher training courses may currently be massively oversubscribed; that always happens in times of recession. Have a look how many of those who qualify are still employed as teachers five years later and think about why that might be?
