Kevin Courtney highlights ULT’s attack on the Teachers’ Pension Scheme.

The United Learning Trust says that it will offer starting salaries of £45,000 in London to teachers who leave the Teacher Pension Scheme.

It claims this is not a cost saving measure – but if this scheme actually comes in then many other Multi-Academy Trusts will offer similar schemes.

The existence of the Teacher Pension Scheme would be threatened. And after it is destroyed, then there will be huge cost savings. 

Some teachers will be tempted because teacher salaries have been held down so much that already about 10% of beginner teachers are opting out of the pension scheme in order to afford student debt repayments and their rents. 

United Learning Trust is not an insignificant player. It currently has 49 secondary schools -so it is bigger than the vast majority of Local Authorities. It is one of the ten largest charities in the UK – though, don’t be misled: the vast majority of its funding comes from the Department for Education.  

Its Chief Executive Jon Coles used to be a senior civil servant at the Department, and is now paid more than a quarter of a million pounds per year of taxpayers’ money. 

This threat is the actual purpose of academisation: the atomisation of the terms and conditions of the people who work in them – and their eventual reduction. 

Michael Gove was concerned that Academy schools had not moved fast enough away from national terms and conditions. It would be a supreme irony if his wish was now fulfilled under a Labour government. 

Bridget Phillipson is planning an education bill in the King’s speech. According to news reports, it will make Academy schools follow the national curriculum.

It could also make them follow national terms and conditions – which would prevent this vandalism by ULT. Let’s hope Bridget takes up that opportunity – or that back bench MPs raise it.

Destroying the Teacher Pension Scheme will make it much harder to rebuild the profession. 

And let’s also support teacher unions campaigning against this dangerous move in order to save the pension scheme and protect the profession in the long term.

– Newly elected Hackney and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbott has called ULT’s proposal a “crude attempt” to undermine teachers’ public sector pensions and called on Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson to put a stop to it.

 Kevin Courtney is a former joint General Secretary of the National Education Union and writes in a personal capacity.

Image: Teachers marching through London, March 15th 2023, c/o Mike Phipps