“Given the teachers pension is self funding”

Lol where did you dig up this gem of information.

how is it possible to finance an undefined cost with a pre-defined contribution?

Teachers pay into a defined contribution scheme. The payments should
go into a properly administered fund, as final salary pension schemes
used to. Teachers pension contributions actually go to the government
and pensions are paid from government funds, just like the state
pension.

If you had a private company like the public sector and its revenue was reduced, then it would either go to the wall or have to lay people off.

Unless it’s a bank, of course.

i do find the ‘teacher pension’ example interesting – £6k a year is a lot – if we suppose most folk pay 5% of their salery, and its matched by their employer, you have to earn 60k/year to get a pension of the same size in the private sector (almost double what the teacher would be earning)..

There’s a clue there in your final parentheses.

I believe this to be one of the aims – so then the schemes can be closed as ” no one wants to join” so then they can make everyone take out private pensions thus creating more money for their friends

More likely current pension funds will be ringfenced with no new applicants. All new employees will probably be on Local Government Pension V2, which will be either reduced benefits or something tweaked like accrual rates.

Basically like most private companies have done with their pension schemes.

Sancho – the teachers pension has a cap on the government contribution – any shortfall must come from either reduced benefits or increased contributions.

There is no undefined cost to the taxpayer possible

Maybe a stupid question, but how does a pension become ‘self funding’? Is there an assumption that the taxes from a teacher will cover their pension costs, or that the £x billion given to education each year covers the cost of the pension payments?

don’t forget the teachers pension is on top of their state pension.

And Im sorry but teachers get a shit hot pension deal.
I worry about working next year and worry myself to death over the lads that work for me and wanting them to still be in a job next year, not pissing about worrying about another 3% additional contribution.

TJ if a lot of teachers retire early and a lot of new teachers dont take up the pensions will all the other teachers rally round and “top-up” the shortfall.

And it still isnt self funding, it should be, but its not, its the same argument as road tax fuel duty, it all goes to central government and they waste it.

There’s a clue there in your final parentheses.

not sure what your point is? that teachers should keep the same pension but earn £60k/annum? nearly triple the national average? It would get better quality teaching staff through the doo, granted..

Sancho – thats what the new scheme does – any shortfall has to be made up from contributions. This scheme was reviewed recently to arrive at the position where is sustainable with no open-ended commitment from the taxpayer.

Central government wastes money? you mean they don’t spend it on services they chuck it in landfill?

TJ if a lot of teachers retire early and a lot of new teachers dont take up the pensions will all the other teachers rally round and “top-up” the shortfall.

That’s how the scheme’s set up, yes.

I worry about working next year and worry myself to death over the lads that work for me and wanting them to still be in a job next year

We (6th form college) had redundancies in the summer. Probably more to come too.

not sure what your point is? that teachers should keep the same pension but earn £60k/annum? nearly triple the national average? It would get better quality teaching staff through the doo, granted..

Teachers’ take home pay is (relatively) low. To compensate, they get a bigger pension.

Teachers’ take home pay is (relatively) low. To compensate, they get a bigger pension.

is it? an AST (advanced skills teacher) can take home up to 64k, or 60k outside of london. with 65 days annual paid leave, that’s already a pretty well compensated package. If you pro-rata 64k with 27 days leave (around average for a private sector job), that’s a 77k package.

is it? an AST (advanced skills teacher) can take home up to 64k, or 60k outside of london. with 65 days annual paid leave, that’s already a pretty well compensated package. If you pro-rata 64k with 27 days leave (around average for a private sector job), that’s a 77k package.

The average teacher’s salary is around £32K. They also spend a fair amount of their evenings marking and preparing lessons. Cherry picking to suit your argument looks a bit petty…

The average teacher’s salary is around £32K. They also spend a fair amount of their evenings marking and preparing lessons. Cherry picking to suit your argument looks a bit petty…

if that’s true, it suggests the average teacher’s career is 6 years and they don’t (on average) apply for any of the additional salery packages (such as AST, TLR, pay for excellent teachers, deputy/head teacher, etc etc).

It probably is the right figure if you bring part time teachers into play, and eliminate heads etc, but thats a bit of a distorted scale. Even so, if you pro-rata the holidays out, its nigh on 39k. I’d say that kinda salery doesn’t need a compensatory pension. I’m not saying teachers are overpaid, I’m suggesting they probably don’t need a pension package worth nearly double what a similar private sector employee would earn

My other half is a teacher, so I know how much time is spent marking/lesson planning. Most teachers average about 4 hours/day on lessons, so it seems spending 5 doing other activities would pretty much bring them up with the average private sector worker?

You want the real truth?

Union membership is on thre decline, so unions must be seen to be active in favour of their members or even more people will think “why be in a union?”

The unions know the current public spending is unsustainable but you know they gotta rty and look good

if that’s true, it suggests the average teacher’s career is 6 years and they don’t (on average) apply for any of the additional salery packages (such as AST, TLR, pay for excellent teachers, deputy/head teacher, etc etc).

By definition, those additions are not available to the majority. You’re cherry picking again.

The maximum pay on the main payscale is £31,552, full time.

http://www.tda.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/salary/teaching-salary-scales.aspx

I think that teachers do a difficult and stressful job, for which they are just about adequately remunerated. Their pension is part of that remuneration.

By contrast, my wife teaches adults in the private sector and earns far more than that. She also gets 35 days holiday.

Sancho stop talking common sense. Seriously.

if hora is your ally in a talking sense competition retire from said conversation is probably better advice.
SO mark you at work then?

here is one of the places where you can dig up the gem – to be fair it is financed by members contributions but it is actually a notional fund rather than an actual fund
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00405.pdf

Like most of the public service schemes, the Teachers’ Pension Scheme operates on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis. 5 This means that employer and employee contributions are paid to the sponsoring government department, which pays out pension benefits, netting off the contributions received.
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) is “notionally funded”. This means that periodic valuations are carried out as though there was a fund. Contributions are set on the basis of these valuations. Gerald Rhodes in his 1965 report, “Public Sector Pensions”, explains that notional funding as an arrangement was first developed for the Post Office (PO) scheme. The PO scheme had originally been part of the Civil Service scheme (a PAYG scheme). In order that the cost of pensions could be “fairly” represented in the PO accounts, it was decided to conform as nearly as possible to normal commercial practice and to assess what the position would have been had the scheme been funded.6
The TPS was set up in the 1920s as a notional fund because it was decided that a real fund would be too expensive:
The pension fund for teachers was set up in the 1920s. It was established as a notional fund to which teachers and their employers were required to contribute prescribed amounts towards the costs of pensions. Notional funding was preferred to real funding because the setting up of a real fund was considered too expensive at the time (though real funds were retained for other local government employees and for universities). Before that teachers’ pensions were paid on a non-contributory basis similar to civil servants.7
The TPS regulations require an account to be maintained, known as the Teachers’ Pension Account, to which contributions from members and employers are credited and from which expenditure on benefits is debited. A notional investment income is assumed on the balance in the account. However, contributions from members and employers are paid to the Exchequer, and the Exchequer effectively meets the cost of all benefits.8
A Working Group set up in 1997 looked at the funding basis and decided that no fundamental change. A change to a funded scheme, it said, would involve significantly higher costs for a period of almost fifty years:

I suppose we could argue the toss but payments are based on a “fund” even though the fund is not real but it has accounts. so we could both argue the case – probably fair to say I overstated the case but their payments are based on what they have paid into the “fund”

TJ if a lot of teachers retire early and a lot of new teachers dont take up the pensions will all the other teachers rally round and “top-up” the shortfall.

legally any shortfall has to be met by members rather than employers contributions so they either will or it will collapse

My other half is a teacher, so I know how much time is spent marking/lesson planning. Most teachers average about 4 hours/day on lessons, so it seems spending 5 doing other activities would pretty much bring them up with the average private sector worker?

yes that’s the great thing I found about lessons they just plan themselves and the resources just magically appear on your desk as the bell goes and the homework just before it ends. Obviously we never went to meetings either

Whats the Labour Party view on this?

“Whats the Labour Party view on this? “

They’re not supporting the strike. If you could find out exactly what they are in favour of, could you let me know, as I’m at a complete loss.

If you could find out exactly what they we are in favour of, could you let me know, as I’m at a complete loss.

You are Ed Miliband and I claim my £5.