Strikes by teachers at the Girls’ Day School Trust will continue today after the NEU teaching union rejected a further pension proposal.
Teacher members of the NEU at 23 independent schools within the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST) first went on strike last month in opposition to their employers’ plans to withdraw from the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS), and there is set to be further action today until Thursday.
Last week the GDST tabled an offer to allow staff to stay in the TPS until September 2023.
It then tabled a new offer on Friday 25 February, it said, which gave teachers a choice between continued membership of the TPS under what it calls “favourable terms” or joining a separate GDST pension plan.
The GDST also said that future pay rises for teachers would be calculated “using a formula that maintains ongoing parity in the cost to the GDST of providing the total reward for all teachers, whichever pension scheme they choose to be part of”.
Teachers on strike over pensions
But the NEU said it hasn’t been given “full details” of the proposal and that the proposal “appears to have unknown strings attached”, so strike action will continue to go ahead.
Tes has asked for further details of the offer but the GDST says some of the information about the exact proposal is “sensitive”.
NEU members at 23 schools in the trust will take part in the three days of strike action.
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said she “welcomed” the latest move by the GDST to find a solution to the dispute, but said that successive proposals had been “inadequate or incomplete”.
She said the NEU did not yet know the full details of the latest plan, and that it was delivered “too late for proper consideration”.
She added: “First impressions are that the GDST’s latest proposal will create an unwelcome two-tier system for our members, worsening conditions over time, including a real-terms pay cut.
“It is in the trust’s interests to continue talks with the recognised union, but we are not yet able to properly assess their proposal and, therefore, strikes will go ahead this week.”
However, Cheryl Giovannoni, CEO of the GDST, said the trust was “wholly disheartened” that the NEU was continuing with the strikes and that it “cannot understand” why the NEU has taken this decision while discussions are “ongoing”.
She said the proposals offered teachers “a clear choice” while supporting the long-term future of the GDST.
She continued: “We are all deeply committed to the education and wellbeing of our students, and we appreciate the key role our teachers play in that. We sincerely regret the impact this is having on everyone in all our schools - students, teachers, staff and parents.
“We are now appealing directly to teachers in the hope that they will accept this offer and the good faith that lies behind it; that they will choose to allow us to work with them to heal the rifts that have been created and to restore confidence and trust in the organisation.”
Members of the NEU working at schools in the GDST first voted to strike in opposition to their employers’ plans to leave the TPS last month.
Scores of private schools have left the TPS in the past two years since the government raised the rate of employers’ contributions by 43 per cent in 2019. State schools were covered for the increase but private schools were not.
