Are we all heading for pension poverty?

The Government & country will suffer severely if reduce Teachers Pensions as one of few attractions to the job with such a paltry salary.

Given that MPs are public employees? are they subject to the same austerity measures. ie. redundancies, cuts in their pension benefits?
Can people really be expected to contribute large amounts of their income over many years when there`s no guarantee of anything at the end of it, apart from that is the people running most of these schemes will have done very nicely out of them.

I can only say to those that denigrate teacher’s pensions and working conditions – obviously they have never taught – the stress is enormous – the pay far less than those in the private sector with the same qualifications. A vast number of teachers actually work a 60 hour week (the 40 hour week is in front of children) – Being in front of children is hard work – remember the vast majority of parents can’t control their one child for an hour – Teachers have to control AND teach groups of 30 – many of whom (30 %) are educationally inadequate GENETICALLY and there are also great numbers of.pupils who are only at school because the law says so. The children’s attainment on entry in slum areas range from educational sub normal unable to speak English (let alone read and write it) to bright articulate but very disadvantaged and poor. They are constantly criticised by the Government who couldn’t teach the average child to read.

Teachers are criticised if they don’t get 100% A to C even though 30% of pupils are intellectually incapable of doing so and ignoring the effects of social conditions. They are inspected by OFSTED whose motive is to criticise publicly – the old HMI were there to help teachers not criticise. Teachers are forced to teach a National Curriculum imposed by a government that know nothing by education. Then lunch and tea (AKA playground) ‘break’ taken up by playground control of say 400 pupils – Ah then “Holidays” taken up by planning and preparation of lessons – educational conferences etc

Teachers are blamed for all forms of social misbehaviour especially by Thatcher rather than the true cause – the government.

Many Teachers are in schools that have to accept pupils that other local schools reject making it even harder. I know a sizeable number of teachers who have died of stress related problems. I have known even greater numbers who left through being able to cope with the stress.

I have worked in Electronics Research (rocket/jet guidance systems) – radar – House Building and repair – Dental Clinic design and building – large scale (over 1000 employees) Industrial Manufacturing – Senior Rating Officer – Passport Officer – Shop Assistant – Computer design and manufacture – Data coding and processing – plus a few small jobs.

In comparison to the stress and effort of teaching they were ALL rest cures. Frankly the teacher’s pension was a “reward” for appalling pay and conditions – they also used to be respected – now they are denigrated for having a pension scheme that everybody USED to have until Brown and Thatcher allowed the private sector to renege on their social responsibility to contribute to workers pensions/.

The real world is that teachers will leave in droves creating the same teacher shortages of the Thatcher era as their conditions deteriorate.