to say this to all the teachers who are striking next week

[Memoo]

As a parent I am 100 % behind you.

I really appreciate that you put your life and soul into your job and im sorry more people don't get just how hard you work for the benefit of our children.

Don't let the bastards grind you down!

But the money is still there isn't it? Butbthe gov are choosing to spend it on wars and Olympics instead.

Btw, what's happening with MP pensions...? I bloody hope they're changing in the same way.

But the money is NOT there, we haven't any money. Gordon Brown spent it all and more. The fact is pensions are changing for everyone. Most companies have had to change their pensions and the public sector cannot be treated differently.

Strikers have no support from me

I disagree SwedeHeart - our childrens futures are not looking dire financially because they know what they are going into and the know what they will have to do to save for the future. Whereas we have saved on the expectation of what we would receive having paid into our pensions - and now they are saying you cant have it after all. Its our situations that are dire and that is part of the reasons for striking.

i think we're all being told different things. as far as i'm aware our pension money is there, that's why they want it, they need it cause there's no other money. but why should the public sector pay out further through their pension?!
its a disgrace.
plus, am i the only one thinking that theyll save a fortune if we all strike on wed because we're not getting paid so they can take that to help fix their massive mistake.
look, im all for helping solve the financial crisis, and we are! pay freeze, VAT etc but stealing our pension is a disgusting suggestion.
and on another note, apparently david cameron said we've to take our kids to work that wed? what an idiot. insurance? risk assessment?.........

The Company I work for stopped final salary accrual ten years ago. The cost of maintaining the provision (because as many people on this thread have failed to point out, only their future pensions are being affected) it costs the company £2,000 per annum per deferred member. These people have left the Company or are retired. £2,000 per member does not sound a lot but multiply that by the number of people and it comes to £8m. This is in a company with just over 3600 employees who have had their first payrise (well below inflation) in thee years including the execs. Now you see what the real cost of final salary pensions means. If the Company makes a profit of £10m (£8m) of that goes automatically to people who have left the Company. We are not a big margin company and therefore to get £10m is hard graft for everybody. The execs work 60 hours a week and work during their holidays to keep the business running and people in jobs to pay a large chunk out in pension contributions. Redundancies have slashed the workforce over the years and continue. The only think keeping the employees is that they know that other competitors have exactly the same challenges. The cost of final salary provision for people that left is increasing every three years with the increase in longevity which has increased beyong all expectations. A promise is a a promise and needs to be kept but was changed for our company 10 years ago to keep the company in business not to line somebody's back pocket. All the employees understand the reality of the situation as it was explained properly.

That is one company among many. Think 30 years forward that is team GB and who will be suffering the pay freezes then, our kids? Many comments on this pension have referred to how people are going to survive on their public sector pension. Not one person has mentioned that they will also get a basic state pension on top of this which is currently £102 per week so £8k becomes £12k (not so bad?). Any extra pension contribution you are asked to pay will benefit from tax relief so £45 per month will become £36 per month out of net pay to keep a guarantee pension. Choose to leave and pay into a DC pension with no employer contribution if you wish but you would need an extra salary to provide the same level. There is a DC pension calculator on www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/yourmoney/interactive/pension_calculator.aspx. Have a look to see what your existing and new contribution will buy on here and then have a look at the difference.

As I have said before the unions are walking into a honey trap with the Govt over pensions. If you looked at a valuation of any pension scheme this year as I am doing with your own you will find that deficits have increased dramatically through longevity and the high levels of govt borrowing.

I am thinking of my kids with this. I have been lucky to work for companies who have contributed something to pensions so have had some help although nowhere near as much as final salary pensions but I know I can manage in retirement as long as the mortgage is paid off and I get my small DC pot plus the basic state pension. My kids will not be able to own their own homes, will not have final salary pensions but will still be paying for those that retired previously as our current employees are. Anything to reduce this burden for them for me is important. MPs should have set an example by reducing their own pension first and I would never have accepted it. (David Cameron apparently turned it down although he needs it less than most). Having said that anyone who has worked with final salary pensions can see how unattainable they are in the private sector. Not through greed of execs as many on here keep suggesting but in order to be able to keep a business going in the future. One last thing when the pension lifetime limit of £1.5m was introduced our socialist government at the time exempted MPs. One for the masses! and the only people thought to be in danger of reaching this limit were senior civil servants.

Example of a ridiculous spending decision

Feenie: The Department for Education estimates the cost of the scheme at £375,000, and is seeking philanthropic sponsorship.

The Department for Education estimates the cost of the scheme at £375,000, and is seeking philanthropic sponsorship.

But haven't got it.

Have you any idea what a school could do with that kind of money? Schools are laying off staff left, right and centre, buildings are leaking, funding is cut all over the place - and yet he chooses to think that what every school really needs right now is a Bible with a foreword from Michael Gove?

feenie you can't be suggesting that Gove is completely removed from the actual realities of the classroom.

Gove said that society should be more demanding of teachers and students. "We should recover something of that Victorian earnestness which believed that an audience would be gripped more profoundly by a passionate, hour-long lecture from a gifted thinker which ranged over poetry and politics than by cheap sensation and easy pleasures."

Obviously there is no change between a Victorian classroom and a modern one, or the children who are learning in the classroom.

Yes, yes, i know this has nothing to do with the strike....

Have you any idea what a school could do with that kind of money?

'A' school?

The £375,000 is split between all state schools, so I'd imagine they couldn't do an awful lot with it.

Anyway, since you brought up this 'ridiculous spending decision' in a thread about teachers' pensions, you're seemingly suggesting that the few £ per school to provide ONE bible should instead be put into the pension pot.

It gives a perfect example of the kind of goonery we have to put up with though.

check this out!

www.theworkers.org.uk/

apparently it is only 99p to download and show your support for the strike - it could be the Christmas number 1!

The £375,000 is split between all state schools, so I'd imagine they couldn't do an awful lot with it.

Give it to one then. It could make an emormous difference to somebody.

I'm not suggesting that it go into the pension pot at all. I'm simply highlighting an example of twattery I saw today, and the extreme arrogance of a politician who thinks he should write the foreword to the Bible.

I'd like to poke that stupid grinning wally in the eye. Plus it's very unrealistic. When was the last time you came across a happy bus driver in London?

I hate the implication that because other people (private sector workers) have crap pensions, teachers should accept them too! When I was deciding on a career, job security and a pension were important to me so I decided to accept the wage ceiling that exists in teaching, in return for more security.

If workers in the private sector have had their t&cs changed, meaning they're having to pay more into their pensions, and get less out, then they should do something about it - negiotiate, take industrial action - rather than demanding everyone else suffers too.

I personally don't want to strike. I can't afford to lose a day's pay and I don't want to miss a day when I should be preparing my classes for exams, but it's about the bigger picture here. The public sector are not responsible for the mess the country's in at the moment, and yet we are expected to pay for it. I've already taken a pay freeze - I am significantly poorer than I was this time last year. I've done more than a lot of private sector workers.

Oh dear god that Bible suggestion. I want to cry.

But it is not as bad as his suggestion that every child should be 'competitively ranked' against each other for every subject (not sure if this has been discussed anywhere more appropriate but I have to say something). Sure that might create a bit of competition for the top place, but what about the poor kids who through no fault of their own are just academically less able, or those with SEN who are going to be consistently ranked at the bottom? How the fuck are they going to feel about being told that they are shit in every subject every term? What utter bastard would suggest that that is a good idea?

I hate Michael Gove so much.

Winge, winge, winge celticlassie.

You don't know what you are talking about either. The private sector has had it's T & Cs changed. It happens all the time in the private sector. 2 companies I've worked for have closed their pension schemes. We just have to suck it up and get on with it.

We are all poorer than we were last year. There is no money in the coffers. You need to get realistic.

So suck it up and get on with it then.

Fontsnob said, yesterday morning:

'Okay, so the reasons that I am striking. Because the amount of paperwork we are expected to do is becoming ridiculous. For eg the latest is that we need to make records of any verbal feedback we give students. Our school has already tried to shaft us over our 10% PPA time. Schools are basically being forced to become academies. Money is constantly wasted by the govt on new initiatives in schools that only last a year. Forcing us to re-write schemes of work almost every year to fit with the new buzzwords. SEAL anyone? There is no proper system in place for kids who are excluded, thus throwing them out to nothing or being expected to keep them in classrooms disrupting everyone else. The govt promised no cut in funds for education yet in real terms there is indeed a cut in funds. Building schools for the future funds were taken away from schools that really needed it, because there was no money, money was then found for Goves pet free schools project.

I could go on. All I want to do is teach, not struggle against counter productive govt crap.'

I agree wholeheartedly with the ridiculous paperwork (busywork) and the timewasting initiatives driven by the latest education secretary trying to make their mark. I think the governement could look to make some job cuts at Whitehall at the ministry of glossy new ways to annoy teachers who would rather be left alone.

All professions have the boring paperwork, but when my electrian hands me my copy of the sheet he has filled in, with ticks and crosses and the odd comment, he doesn't have to write down, 'Mrs X offered me a cup of tea. I drank one cup tea. Milk two sugars. Also 2 borbourne biscuits and one custard cream'.

Perhaps the unions should have negotiated to deal with these as a condition of you accepting the latest offer? So that the teachers would gain some benefit from this change, instead of none?

...so I decided to accept the wage ceiling that exists in teaching...

Headteachers can earn over £100k p/a.

Do you honestly believe you 'decided to accept' £100k+ as a wage ceiling, as opposed to going into the private sector where you'd probably have earned more?

I'm once again stunned that some people seem to think the private sector is all fat cat salaries and bonuses.

Head teachers run schools, they rarely teach if at all. It is a very different job to teaching.

Lordlovely, I can't actually believe I am typing this but....I agree. That should be on the agenda far more than it is. The only problem is that we cant trust that one government will continue with the policies of the previous. So by all means we could negotiate with this and then in 4 years time it will all go out of the window. Labour, for their faults did champion for better t&c, they put in place the PPA time etc. low cover expectations etc. the introduction of the academies will mean that the individual schools don't have to stick to any of that.

Whilst I agree that crap teachers should be easier to get rid of, the way that this is going to be dealt with will actually place undue pressure on the good ones. Extra work outside of the classroom leaves less time to actually plan and teach good lesson, give valuable feedback etc. Gove is the crappiest in a long line of crap education secretaries.

I certainly don't think the private sector is "all fat cat salaries and bonuses" - but it's the fact that the British government are wanting the public sector to pay for the avarice of big business while going out of their way to protect them that I have the issue with.

I also did not suggest that those in the private sector have not had their t&cs changed, I said that if they didn't want it to happen, they should have done something about it. It seems from reading this thread that a lot of private sector workers are happy enough to accept less money, in order to 'do their bit', so good luck to them.

(I am just catching up from yesterday, but wanted to jump in to endorse what Font said, partly because we have been disagreeing on other things. I imagine it is the same for nurses. I hope that the government cults decimate the Ministries of New Initiatives. especially in the Revention of the Wheel and Grandmother Egg-sucking Education. The cost of the glossy paperwork alone must be a fortune.

And the poster who asked sarcastically whether singing in the bath would affect the situation in Europe just after saying that she understood it, demonstrated her own ignorance in her own words.)