Teachers and school support staff now eligible for a Blue Light card

[noblegiraffe]

In case any teachers don't follow Mr P and aren't aware, teachers and school support staff (including sixth form colleges) have been added to the list of people eligible for a Blue Light card. If you pay £4.99, you get two years of discounts at multiple places.

https://teachers.bluelightcard.co.uk

Because teachers love a bargain there's currently over an hour waiting time to sign up, but it was only announced yesterday so will hopefully calm down soon.

It feels nice to be recognised as essential community workers!

Are the discounts even worth it?

A quick google and can't see anything that looks good.

But they said they're returning to school next week, so clearly not in England.

Great for teachers. I wish they’d open it up to farm workers. Low paid and we’d struggle without them.

So they make money from the retailers. It's how the business model works - they'll get their income (beyond the initial costs of the card/account admin) from the retailers. Kind of like how Quidco works.

I’m wondering the same!

I never found anything useful. I think I used it at Pizza Hut once or twice.

Ah yes, cos it's straightforward to get some experience then try to get into teacher training while giving up most of their salary 🙄

Can I just add to this, especially to the person who stated teachers are on 40K plus a year.....some teachers might be, but definitely not the majority.
Also, this is including teaching assistants....most teaching assistants are on pretty shit pay but they do the job for the children, most TA's work with the most needy children, so those with SEN, language barriers etc & a lot are left to plan work for those children, deliver that work, mark that work (basically do the teachers job on half the pay).

Also, it's not teachers faults that they have been added to this scheme.....why are people being so vile to the teaching profession

It is very common now. The thing is - the discounts and when/where you can use them are shrinking. The card does pay for itself tho - Greene King discount your whole bill, as do Hungry Horse/Toby carvery for a cheapie lunch. Fat Face gives a good discount, but not on sale items any more.

Im in the police and you usually need to get a code to get the discount, and in some places (Nando’s for instance) you need your work id too. Nando’s discount is crap too. Asda have reined it massively now. It was great last year and completely paid for our Christmas food shop.

Yes she did - 19:12 "@rkahic I actually get 48K after 5 years as I’m in Scotland". I was responding to that poster as she and I are both in Scotland.

DH has one (has had it for many years); it's definitely worth having. We've saved quite a bit on things like cinema tickets or meals in the past. There are some good discounts on various things but just depends on what you want/use.

This is not how the Blue Light Card works and if you’re friend is showing her warrant card to get discounts, she’s bang out of order.

I have one (NHS) and they're great - just make sure that you ask if the retailer accepts them as you often find smaller shops, cafes etc take them but don't advertise.

Teachers do a great job but they are not an emergency service and your experiences described above are rare in their entirety and I was raised by a teacher who worked in an inner city school and have plenty of teacher friends and cross paths with plenty professionally. I don’t doubt you but the above is not even remotely typical of teaching (unless when you say ‘deal with’ you mean write out a referral about).

Probably because the more people that get access, the worse the discounts are going to be. It’s already not as good as it was a few years ago. Nothing to do with teachers though.

When I worked in retail the shop I worked in didnt pay anything, they funded the discount like they did for over 60s and their own loyalty scheme. In what way would the retailers pay to give out a discount?

I work in an independent school and have had one for about 2 years. To be fair my school is owned by a charity so may be that’s why?

The 40 days is correct but that's inclusive of public holidays. The other 25 are unpaid and called "school closure" days.

Link it to your asda reward card and I think you get extra points. So that could make it worthwhile even if you don't use it anywhere else.

Places that give discounts listed here https://skintdad.co.uk/blue-light-card-discounts/
there seem to be loads listed.

They're not BL discounts then. A lot of places do unofficial discounts but to get a BL one you need your BL card

If a purchase is made through the scheme, either the retailer has paid for them to be included in the list (as that brings in more customers/ups sales) or they pay a percentage of the profit margin to them as commission. Like Quidco takes the referral bonus/commission from a retailer but then pays a proportion of it to the customer to ensure that they use Quidco for the clickthrough or real life purchase and charges an annual fee to the customer to cover costs if no purchases are made.

Including teachers simply dilutes the meaning of the scheme and the recognition it provides. Try as hard as you like but teachers aren’t emergency workers.

So if it’s not for emergency service workers, what is the scheme exactly and what are the actual qualifying criteria?

Key workers? Great - let’s use the definition from Covid. Oh wait, many of those are in strategically important jobs so may have a higher salary than you think should be entitled to this card. Ok - so can we redefine that with a salary cap at, say, average wage. Ah - problem. That would exclude most teachers and fair few doctors.

Some kind of community service definition to thank people for their work? Hmm, good point raised earlier, what about the charity workers and don’t forget the thousands of volunteers who underpin so much of the provision people need around public services including health and education? They don’t qualify, why not?

All public sector and charity staff and volunteers? We’re looking at well over 20% of the workforce if we do that and then add all the volunteers too. Cut that by capping salary? Ah yes, down to the problem of teachers generally having good salaries AND PENSIONS again.

So what is the card for? How would you define it and who is therefore in and who is out?