Well, there must be a reason. Lord Hutton isn't the be all and end all. Not everything he says will be 100% correct.
I suspect the answer lies in the same reason they thought they'd sell off the Forestry Commission they think they'll get away with it.
Also do remember that this change is not something that will revert after everything is fine again. Pay gets unfrozen, jobs become available, but the pension scheme wont go back to what it was. Pieface - I wont argue with you anymore with regards to how I feel about the private sector cutting jobs. If you believe I don't care then whatever, its irrelevant. I also dont believe you just "sat back" and watched your job go away. I certainly believe you would have tried as hard as possible to keep it... I dont understand where you got that idea from but sorry if I gave that impression. Also, "there must be a reason" is what we are trying to get people to ask, so well done. What is the reason is the question we ask in return, and nothing satisfactory (i.e. nothing that relates to the sustainability of the scheme, unfairness of the scheme etc) is the answer we get. steveo_mcg - the forestry thing was odd, I sometimes feel they never intended to sell it off but did it as a PR stunt to show that they can listen. Thats the paranoid part of me speaking though
Good luck Bogo and any other teachers. Fiddling with pensions is low, throws away all the sacrifices you've been taking in return for a decent pension. Teachers in particular don't deserve such treatment, anyone who knows a teacher can surely agree that it's not a job, it's a lifestyle, there's constant work and responsibility outside of school hours.
But surely it's only self sustaining due to contributions being made up by the employer, ie the government, they ain't got the cash to punt into at current levels or they want to use the cash for other purposes? I think, that the man on the street is not as supportive as he could be because the contributions the government make are funded by the man on the street, he's already been subjected to pay freezes, reduced pension, increased prices and taxation of late so he has to wonder why when so much has been taken from him should he continue to give to teachers. Of course all of that is based solely on my very very very limited understanding of how the pension scheme may or may not work
This is true. It used to be that there were four times as many teachers in work as claiming their pensions whereas now it's only 10 per cent more. That is definitely not a sustainable position in which to be, so they do need to raise the retirement age or else pretty soon there's going to be more retired teachers than active ones. Even now, when a teacher (or civil servant for that matter) retires now, they still have to wait 5 or more years before they can claim state pension, because they have reserved rights to retire at 60. As a civil servant myself, I cannot see how that is fair or sustainable.
But the Hutton report said it was sustainable. It seems very obtuse to me as if they take away your pensions and you end up destitute in your old age the state will have to pay for your care. Biting off your nose to spite your face comes to mind.
How is it self sustaining ? Teachers get the money from the government. Government gets the money from private sector (and a bit of taxes from the public sector, but that is pretty much same as paying out less thanks to the taxation of people in public sector). Private sector funds the whole public sector, so if private sector has problems there is no "self sustaining pension scheme" for public sector. The money has to come from somewhere, and it is not the public sector or government - it is the private sector. Your kind of logic reminds me of gypsies in my country - when they are asked why they don't work they answer "government gives us the money". Like if governemnt is something abstract, getting money from thin air.
And how do you propose we pay teachers? From thin air perhaps? All public sector individuals are paid from the public purse which is obviously derived from taxation.
Perhaps we should just sit back and let market forces run their course. At no other time in history have people of low income been able to access this much education for free. They are squandering it. They do not boundary their children, do not teach them respect for their teachers and do not teach them the value of education and hard work. Perhaps when there are no state-funded schools left and they have to pay for education privately, they will start valuing what teachers do again.
steveo_mcg: i talk about "self-sustaining" statement. Pension for public workers from their sallaries is not sustainable, because sallary and pensions in public sector is depending on private sector. If private sector fails, everything else fails.
If public sector fails, everything else fails, including the private sector. Unless you think there is good money in public transport, sewage, utilities, social and health care, agriculture, defence manufacturing. "What?!" I hear you cry. "There are private companies in all those fields!". Yes, but they are often only able to turn a profit because they are heavily subsidised by the tax payer (making them decidedly public sector-ish) or their services/goods bought by the government with tax payer money. And when they fail? Well, we can't manage without their essential services, can we? So they get bailed out with tax payer money.
So you say the state would work without private sector. Hm... Then where would the money come from ? Not from the taxes of public sector workers, because they get their money from the state. Not their employers, because their employers are part of the state (private schools=private sector, and we talk about no private sector case here). I don't say public sector work is not needed. I say "sustainable pension system" for public sector worker based on taxes paid by people working in private sector is not "sustainable", if private sector has serious issues. If the private sector pays less taxes, government either have to use their reserves (that is not fitting the definition of the word "sustainable") or have to borrow from banks/other countries (international debt is again not fitting the definition of the word "sustainable"). My only issue is as you can see with the fact that someone says a public workers pension system is "sustainable", when everything else around him is falling apart and that everything is funding the state by taxes paid.
No, I am saying that the two are interdependent. Just like tax payers are supplementing public sector pensions, the public sector provides services and products at a fairly decent and reliable standard at a cheap price (i.e. the taxes paid). It also guarantees that private sector products and services meet a certain standard at a reasonable price. Free Market economy is an idealist's dream. In reality we have informational asymmetry, price fixing and a plethora of dirty tricks to extract more more money from the customer and deliver less in return. We are protected from that by public sector agencies. When we are down and out, it is the public sector that picks us up. It is the public sector that guarantees us a minimum standard of living. Affordable healthcare and housing, and free education for your kids? Priceless. For everything else there is MasterCard.
Shoukd have mentioned one of the reasons the pension scheme is sustainable I guess - at the moment the teachers pensions scheme is turning profit for the government (yep, profit). This means we have a bit of a kitty essentially. The reason it is sustainable is due, in part, to the high mortality rate of headteachers, apparently. Of course the people who pay most are the highest paid, so headteachers pay lots and lots in, and the average lifespan of a head teacher is something silly like 18 months to 3 years as it is such a high stress job. Now this huge amount of money they have paid in does not get entirely redistributed and so swells the funds.
It could be worse. You could spend six years in university to then be told where you're going to work for the next two years for £25k a year on stupid hour weeks with **** all holidays. The public sector sucks. Get on with it or find a different job.
Except the small flaw in that plan you overlooked: There will be no decent teachers left. There are hardly any full time posts in my sector (HE), and they are making people redundant left right and centre. We're being forced to teach 25 hours a week (teach.. not work) meaning we've lost all our research and scholarly activity time - the very thing that allows us to be true dual professionals. Unlike the compulsory sector what we do in HE is different - I teach and run a degree course, but to enable me to do that, I have to also BE what I teach. Hence I am a photographer as well. In compulsory sector, you don't get physicists teaching physics, or mathematicians teaching maths any more. In HE, you do though. You can't teach at degree level unless this is the case. This is why we had research time. To take a full time teaching post I had to stop shooting professionally. Research keeps me current, keeps me able to teach the subject at this level. Take that away and you may as well just get some primary school supply teacher in who's only 1 week ahead of the students in subject specialism. Someone before said teachers get 13 weeks holiday? LOL Someone has to plan lessons and maintain a course of study you know... you can't do that when there are students in being taught, so guess when all that happens? It's even worse in HE because we don't have half term holidays. I'll get 4 weeks holiday this year.... pretty much like most people. Wake up and get this idea of teachers getting 3 months holiday out of your head. A degree in this country is worthless. I know for a fact that it's almost impossible to fail a degree these days. How do I know? Because unfortunately, not every student is brilliant, and I fail them. My decisions are over-ruled by the management team however. Pathetic. Schools and universities are more than ever forced to operate as a pure business with the quality of education being a long way down the list of priorities. People complain about teachers riding the gravy train and having it too easy, and it's about time we woke up and got real with the rest of the private sector... but what you fail to see is that if you want YOUR CHILDREN to grow up and enjoy the success you did, then you need incentives to get the BEST people into education. If your kids are being taught by chimps, they'll be chimps. Simple. All we ask is a safe, sustainable pension for when we retire (probably involuntarily these days) after spending years educating your children.
