GDST Trustees

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How has the GDST Board of Trustees managed to create the first strike by staff in 149 years?

Cheryl Giovannoni and her board have treated a unique educational institution in the UK based on values, ideals and morals like a business because they fundamentally fail to comprehend the ethos of service that powers the GDST.

I am certainly not rich. We couldn’t afford a 5% fee increase without significant issues. And yes, I’m frequently checking out heating. It’s a massive stereotype to talk about ski holidays - we haven’t had a holiday, at all, since starting kids in private. It’s one of the sacrifices we make and at least three in DDs class have parents who are teachers! I’ve just looked at TPS - you do not get the final salary! You get a proportion of 80ths. If you’ve paid in for 40 years, you get half of you average final three years salary. If you pay on for 28 years, you get 28 80ths etc. anyone who really thinks they’ll get their final salary as a pension is wrong. Even the police (the best pension out there) don’t get that - each year buys them a 50th.

In one of our year groups ( in one class alone) we have five children of teachers. Strangely enough after the recent scholarship exams all of them have been awarded a scholarship for sport, academic or drama. This has raised a few eyebrows too. I appreciate that is a whole different thread.
From a parent perspective, we shouldn’t be the ones that are automatically first in line to absorb more increases. We too have jobs that are not what they once were, everyone is feeling the pressure but I’m not sure that is always considered. I’m writing this from home, we are not in the second home, holiday every half term category.

@Anjo2011 totally agree. I bet loads of teachers have kids at private schools. Doesn’t mean they are rich! If you look here you can see the calculations @Phineyj and an average salary of 30k over 25 years would give you 12k a year in retirement. www.teacherspensions.co.uk/members/calculators/methodology.aspx Still a damn sight more than I’d be getting on my 8% contribution at work.

I think a good comparison is what you get out of a defined benefit pension for what you put in, rather than just comparing costs. This is where the 20% difference comes in.

So, a defined benefit pension like TPS gives you an index linked pension from your retirement age. It also gives a spousal pension if you die. The TPS as a career average pension (which is what all will be having from April 2022 regardless on what they do about the McCloud period) accrue at 1/57 of salary. So a teacher on £57k (most on less than this by far) accrues £1k of pension per year from 67.

The equivalent from a defined contribution pension pot (which is what TPS will be replaced by) in terms of a guaranteed index linked pension which a spousal pension, means buying an annuity. To buy a £1k pension would require a £30k pension pot.

So, look at the costs to schools. GDST is talking about providing a DC pension wheee they pay in 20%. For that teacher on £57k, you’re looking at a contribution of £10.4K from the employer. In the TPS they pay 23.6%. which is obviously more….but not loads more. If the teacher pays in the typical 10% ish that someone on a higher salary would pay now, they are adding £5.7k. So about £16k is being added to the pot. This is a lot less than the TPS. And the key thing is, it’s the contribution that’s defined, not the benefit or pension. No-one knows how the stock market will perform or what the likely outcome is at the end. That’s a key element of why the new pension is less good - it’s not just about the value being less.

Some schools that have pulled out have actually matched the TPS employer contribution. But that’s the current contribution. They could reduce the employer contribution in future if they wished to.

Teachers started their careers on the basis that they could have a decent idea of their pension in retirement. They can look at the Pesnion website and see exactly what they already accrued. They can use the calculators to see what their pension will be on retirement with different assumptions about years of work and salary. By working a 30-35 year career on a solid but not impressive salary, they can get a pension which added to the state pension gives a guaranteed and known decent retirement income.

The new pension will be lower and uncertain.

People choosing a career can choose to be a teacher or not. Those who really want to do it and work in a state school can still have those benefits. Those who don’t want to work in a state school can now choose to train to be a teacher knowing the pension won’t be nearly as good and that the salary in independent schools won’t compensate for that. Many independents pay less than the state sector anyway. Some pay the same. Others pay more. Yes, reduced school fees are an added bonus for those with school aged children who work in schools that are suitable for their children. It is another way to attract staff.
But if you weren’t desperate to teach (and fewer people are each year) and you’re a graduate who is well qualified, the other options might well be more attractive once the key rewa4 of the pension is gone. No doubt teacher salaries in the independent sector won’t be rising to allow teachers to compensate for the lower pension.

In the end, I understand that many industries have closed their defined benefit contribution and the TPS in the independent sector could be seen as just another example of that. I think this is a bit different though, given 90% of teachers in the industry will still be receiving it. If state schools were losing it too, well no case could be made, but they’re not.

And regarding parents and costs and fees….. I’d say, challenge schools on how they spend the fees overall. Teacher salaries and their pensions are a key cost, but schools have choices about other spends too - considering building spends and other facilities is an rea to review too. Don’t assume fee increases are just due to teacher pensions….whatever a school might say. Do t imagine that if the school pulls out if TPS suddenly the fee increases will end or subside. They won’t. They will just send the money on different things like buildings or more peripheral staff. Consider what you want from your fees and whether pulling out of the TPS will mean you’re more or less likely to get it, both now and in the future. And if you believe in independent education and would like your kids to send their kids privately in future, consider what possible impacts this will have on independent education overall.

The idea that loads and loads of people are just desperate to work in the independent sector, and terms and conditions in the sector are wonderful isn’t the reality. Many schools find it really hard to recruit. Many schools are too small really to be viable. They really struggle to recruit as they often pay little and have poor working conditions. It will be even harder without the TPS. The thing is,parents rarely know this stuff. Schools won’t be telling parents that only 3 crap candidates applied for a post, or that 4 crap people applied and they hired the least crap of them. But most families know that sometimes their child had experienced a teacher who isn’t that great. Why do you think the school employed them? What determines where the great staff go….it’s conditions, pay and pensions. If the school your kids go to can’t offer these, you can’t expect the best teachers to be there. The fees have to be high enough to cover these things.

@WombatChocolate, I enjoyed reading your post and there are points you have made that are food for thought. Especially the point about challenging what the fees are being spent on. The money spent on school lunches is not value for money and the food in our school is dire. But any approach to the school is met with the same response. Paying nearly £5 per day for a child that doesn’t go in the canteen/restaurant is ridiculous. At our school there are IMO a few great teachers and also some good ones. Obviously I cannot only speak for the school we are at and my experience which is coming up for ten years in private education. Amongst the great and good, there are some that are stealing a living, haven’t moved with the times and are just coasting along taking the salary and the 50% off school fee for their child. Again, I believe this is a massive benefit if you can make use of it, which many do. I don’t think all teachers offer value for money but that is a much harder area to address as a parent. I’m too far in to think that school tell us everything but I still make the choice to send my children. Do I question the decision, yes because not all private experiences are great and also not all private school teachers are the cream of the crop.

*can only speak for the school we are at

@WombatChocolate thank you fir explaining. I guess i just think if they prefer tps they can get a different job? They can go to state sector. They have chosen a private sector role in what is basically a business. If the conditions have changed, change schools. If my bosses suddenly told me their office was moving, Or my salary was being cut, or my pension, I’d have a choice to stay or go, but not to strike. Wanting to stay and keep benefits they say they can’t afford (and with the fuss it’s causing they would not be doing it unless they had to I’m sure) is wanting to have your cake and eat it too. We all face decisions in our careers and lives daily - there are thousands of schools to choose from, striking is exessive IMHO

@Anjo2011 the food at our school is terrible too. A total embarrassment and a complete waste of money. DD eats a plain cheese sandwich most days.

Head changed the providers last year from lovely in house tasty food to chartwells (the ones in the lockdown lunch packages scandal).

@hupfpferd , ours is in house ! Looks wonderful on Instagram, like most things, but apparently it’s dreadful. I would prefer a slimmed down menu of better choices and ingredients . Every parents evening it gets mentioned and in school surveys. It never changes and is a real closed book at our school. It seems to be the way when employees have worked there for years . The only day it gets eaten is on a Friday , it’s an expensive fish finger lunch when you add up what is spent over the week. I don’t know if it happens at all GDST but the teachers eat different food from the children. What does that tell you.

TPS is a final salary pension. It's not unusual for an independent school teacher, maybe with some management responsibilities, to be on £50-60k by retirement.

Just to pick up on this, a final salary pension does not mean your pension will be the same as your final salary. It will be based on your final salary, but it will be significantly less.

According to the TPS calculator, if you are earning £60k when you retire and you have been working 40 years, you will get a pension of £30k per year and a lump sum of £90k. To get a pension of £50k-£60k with 40 years' service, you need to retire on earnings of £100k-£120k. With less service, even higher earnings are needed.

If teachers are going to find their pensions reduced by 20% and this equates to £10k-£12k, GSDT must have some very highly paid teachers. There have been repeated references to a reduction in salary on this thread when that is clearly not what is being proposed. All this makes me wonder if some teachers think that their TPS pension will be the same as their final salary. If they are expecting that, they will be disappointed when they retire.

@1forward2back,

Are you against all collective employee action in all sectors? That is a pretty extreme view.

Interestingly, you cannot have your salary cut legally, except in certain cases. I am not sure why pensions are not treated the same way as, ultimately, money is fungible, and teachers will have to put (considerably) more money into their pensions every year to obtain the same benefits upon retirement.

@prh47bridge No the trust have given us a very clear calculator to use.

I didn’t look at the percentage terms when working out how much worse off I will be. I identified how much I would have per annum in the TPS and then worked out how long I could draw down that amount in the Aviva scheme before my pot runs out. Based on retiring at 68, my pot would be gone in 10 years and I will be left with the remainder of my TPS pension for the rest of my life. So in essence, I will pay more for the next 28 years and then that pot will be gone in 10 years. From the age of 78, I will have £12,000 less per year to live on than if I am kept in the TPS.

Great post from @WombatChocolate.

No I’m off to fill in an application form for another job - closing date tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Does that mean you are planning on living off your pension savings rather than buying an annuity?

Now, an annuity may well yield a lower return than more years in TPS, but it won't cut off. So a comparison might be income with annuity at (pick a range) v full TPS

There was some muttering a while ago that the government might simply ban non-public sector employees from being in public sector schemes. Does anyone know if that is still on the cards?

I didn't want to go into the detail (I'm not GDST) but I have seen a similar presentation to Surely (maybe the same one, there are only a few accountants who specialise in this) and she has explained the issue clearly - the money will run out (absent very optimistic assumptions about stock market returns).

Add to that many teachers have got breaks in service due to maternity, went into teaching later, have chronic health conditions meaning they could want to access ill-health retirement, have family members without much/any pension, may not own their own homes, and can you see why they are angry, worried and upset?

The pension has always been considered a deferred part of the pay. The word 'pension' actually derives from the Latin for pay.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am aware that a final salary pension doesn't literally pay your final salary -- but losing those years between say 55 and 65 is a seriously expensive matter, not just for the teacher but potentially their entire family.

Good thing we've got one of the youngest teacher workforces in the OECD, isn't it? Although there is an ongoing recruitment crisis. I guess you get what you pay for.

Pension flexibility’s mean most people with defined contribution pensions (what the new pension GDST will give teachers) go for drawn down rather than annuities.

The reason is that annuities are so very expensive. The cost of buying an index linked annuity with spousal benefits is vast. Using the pension pot built up can buy most people a far too small annuity. So instead they use draw down. Many work on drawing down 3.5-4% per year of the pot and leave the remaining amount invested, hoping for growth. The prediction is this will last for most people. But of course there’s no guarantee.

The reason people are keen to hang onto TPS as a defined benefit scheme is t just it’s financial value but the certainty of defined benefit. As I said, buying the certainty that comes with an annuity is so very expensive most people retiring now don’t do it anymore, it’s an unaffordable luxury.

And yes, to the poster, who suggested the teachers leave and go to the state sector. Yes, many will. They will leave the schools that have left the TPS and go to other independents which remain, or some will go the the state sector. If lots more leave the TPS, more will go to the state sector. Remember there’s a huge recruitment crisis in teaching and it won’t be hard to get jobs. The state sector jobs might not be what many of these teachers really want, but lots will do it. That’s the whole point isn’t it….because the independent sector schools who have withdrawn are left with a smaller pool of staff.

In schools that withdraw, instantly a small number leave and look for work elsewhere. That’s the flexible ones. In the medium term, others do too once they can get their heads round and sort out families, or their kids leave the school they are having reduced fees for. So then some more teachers go, and each time the school advertises it finds the pool of applicants isn’t quite as big as they just aren’t as attractive as an employer. The impact is hard to measure - what impact is there when 3/4 of your teachers are ‘okay’ rather than being good/great? The kids will sttll learn to read and write, they will still do exams. How do you measure the impact? It’s hard to measure and most parents will have nothing else to compare to….but something a bit more mediocre isn’t really what you pay your fees for is it? You rely on the school being able to recruit good teachers and to offer something better than you can have for free…but they have to pay to do that. As people said, it’s a business. The best teachers don’t come for the same/lesser wages and an inferior pension. Do t be fooled into thinking the independent sector offers a fantastic working environment that people will sacrifice wages and pension to get. The reality is that when you add in the big extra-curricular demands and lack of directed-time directives that the state sector benefit from, lots of independent school teachers are on their knees. Fee reductions are lovely for anyone with kids who are the right age (and possibly gender) but at any one time, the vast majority of independent teachers don’t have kids in the school.

I’d be off to another independent school or a state school within 2 years in their position. Secure pensions and certainty of what will be available (only possible with defined benefit…who knows what the annuity purchase rate will be when you get to retirement, even if you go for that expensive option from defined contribution) is very important to people, in a job which doesn’t pay brilliantly and where the pension is a key part of the package.

Rose bursars like to mention that, yes.

Although I'm not sure if posters are aware that post-1992 universities and HE colleges are also in TPS, currently with no method of coming out?

It would be a pretty brave govt tackling that one...

Regarding Wombat's comments, the broader context is that over 50s are leaving the UK labour market in disproportionate numbers since the pandemic.

UK teaching generally requires high energy and very long hours and has relied (at least till spring 2020) on importing foreign nationals and untrained beginners to fill vacancies (not equating the two -- the foreign trained teachers I've worked with have been exceptionally good). Don't underestimate the fallout of the CAGs/TAGS debacle on morale either.

Teachers may simply do something else if the T&C are less attractive. Because they're not THAT attractive!

Thank you @Surelyitscoffeetime. That makes more sense.

Personally, I expect I will be going for an annuity when I retire in a few years. Yes, I could get more per year from drawdown but, given that my outgoings will reduce significantly when I retire (and are likely to reduce further as I get older), I don't need that, so, being somewhat risk averse, I'll probably go for the security of something that won't run out. However, that's just me. Other people will make other decisions.

Watching as an interested parent with a DC moving to private secondary next year. How do I find out if the school is in TPS? A Google has not helped…

@HighRopes ask directly - that’s what I’ve been doing. But although I’m not a teacher, I have a family full of teachers or married to them, several at non TPS schools with no plans of leaving, so don’t let this scare you. In fact, it has never been mentioned, until I have asked them about their pensions. @TheReluctantPhoenix your question is interesting. My uncle was in the police for a long time, after the army, where strike action is not permitted in both fir public protection, and I feel teaching should be the same (also fire service). In the end it’s the kids missing out and they are powerless in this (especially after the past two years).

Having done a bit more googling @WombatChocolate I can see that the following is the case. It’s on the nEU’s own pages. In September 2020 there were only 995 private schools in the TPS. So over half were not. Those schools include a very wide range (the list is on the NEU site). Including a school that was recently voted best prep school in the country and another that won an Indy award in secondary boarding school last year - so two years on, still winning awards. I also started checking inspection reports and all looked ok. There is an FOI online showing that a further 87 have come out this year and around 190 are planning to. If those all come out (I imagine that includes the gdst school I am looking at for my DD) then in just two years (during a pandemic) that would be an increase from half of schools not in tps to surely three-quarters! that’s a large majority of schools not in TPS and I think it would very quickly become more, especially once the effects of a pandemic are seen - why would those other quarter stay? Many teachers I know have trained with the intention to work in the private schools and they will want jobs. If they were being offered no pension or even offered my 8% pension (!), maybe they would be put off. But they are being offered 20% contributions! In London, where I am, five of our local schools are already on the list of coming out and are still seen as amazing schools locally. The teachers might get younger - I could see a lower pension being really attractive when I was mid 20s and trying to buy a house for example. Don’t forget that one of the main perks in Indy schools is additional holiday days - 3-4 weeks in some. Plus higher pay to start with. A quick Google of the gdst pay scale shows it to be a lot higher than the state sector to begin with. A teacher after a year of qualifying would be 3k above state pay. A teacher at the top of what looks like the ‘normal’ teacher range is at £52k in London (£5k above state) and that’s before we look at pension (plus I can only find the 2019 scale). Looking up the scale shows a state teacher with the biggest ‘responsibility alliwance’ in london working for £53k. On gdst scale that’s £63k.
I’m not saying that all teachers will stay in these schooos - they will have a choice and that’s my point. I am saying that, weighing up all of the above, I doubt it will impact quality of the teaching for my kids. In fact from looking at the list today, I see that my daughter’s school was already out in 2019 (as parents we had no idea and nobody went on strike) and yet I would say the teaching is superb. My son’s school is not on the list (though might be amongst the schools considering it now) and I have had some issues with the teaching. Many factors impact teaching quality - this might become one of them, but I seriously doubt it. Just my opinion.

@1forward2back

The pay scales are a bit of smoke and mirrors as lots of private schools only offer pay progression up to a point (if at all). I have been stuck for 4 years so I would actually be on £2k more in the state sector. No signs of moving up to the top of my pay hand unfortunately.

*pay hand

• pay band (I hate auto-correct!)

@HighRopes , look at the benefits section of a teacher advert in the "work with us" section.

I suspect United Learnjng (Surbiton
high, Guildford High) are following GDST very closely to see what happens. The schools run by trusts - Hampton, LEH, St Pauls are much further away from this issue.

@HighRopes , looking at adverts only works for some schools as some like United learning have closed TPS to new applicants.