“Exhausted” teachers have spoken out against a “work until you drop” pension age of 68 which it “seems an impossibility” for them to get to.
Delegates at the NASUWT annual conference in Birmingham this morning voted for the teachers’ pension age to be restored to 60.
Candida Mellor, a teacher from North Tynside, said: “I keep reading about the phrase work till you drop. I don’t want this, and I don’t want this for our younger colleagues who it’s going to affect more.”
“It will be 68 when I access my pension - 21 years of teaching left. That seems like an awfully long time when I’m already feeling so exhausted. It is the physicality of the job that people underestimate, along with the mental resilience which is required to get through the day-to-day workload.
“When I’m at work I don’t generally sit down from eight in the morning till four in the afternoon… I don’t generally get to the loo either. I don’t have to exert myself to reach my 10,000 steps, it’s just part of my daily job. There’s also the weightlifting of heavy books. And I’m just a classroom based secondary teacher, technology, food tech, PE teachers require more energy.”
Ms Mellor said that primary colleagues had to deal with “very physical young children” and working in special needs “takes an extra level”. “Yesterday my friend who works in this sector was showing me the bites and grip bruises on her arm from a student,” she said.
Rachel Watson, a teacher from Newcastle upon Tyne, said that the government knew “teachers can’t and will not reach retirement age”.
“They know they will not have to pay out a full pension to the majority of teachers because they have made sure that we are all burnt out before we get anywhere near that age.
“How can anyone survive teaching until we are expected to? It seems an impossibility.”
Teacher Neil Fletcher said that moving the pension age had broken “the unwritten, unspoken contract that we’ve always had government: look after our future, look after our children, and we’ll look after you in your future”.
He added: “The prime minister’s promise to create a country that works for everyone is going to become a country where you have to keep on working and working until you drop.”
Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary, said: “Teachers are increasingly burned out long before they reach 68.
“The government requires teachers to work until they are 68, but fails to prevent the widespread discrimination practiced in too many schools against older teachers who are disproportionately subject to capability procedures, denied access to CPD and regularly told they are too expensive.
“They are also penalised by the negative culture in too many schools towards requests for flexible working and the punitive financial impact of accessing their pension before 68 mean teachers have little choice but to work until they drop.”
