A humorous look at retirement from teaching

[Graham Davies]

Getting vaguely back on topic I very much hope to be spending a "hideously early" retirement in similar fashion.

I thoroughly recommend it!

[Maggie Jarvis]

isn't their a strong case for teachers lobbying for changes in the pension scheme?

I certainly agree with that sentiment Andy - how about we get the same pergentage of final salary as civil servants - 60 80ths I believe it is! I am sure I heard that this was under discussion somewhere recently, but I doubt that it was anywhere within the government!?!

the reason the teachers pension scheme was relatively sound financially was that teachers kept dying in the attempt to complete their 40 years

That may be the case for some but I am pleased to say that my ex teacher father is about to reach the age of 90 and is still going strong. He always said he was determined to get the most out of the Teachers Pension Fund!

[Guest]

That may be the case for some but I am pleased to say that my ex teacher father is about to reach the age of 90 and is still going strong. He always said he was determined to get the most out of the Teachers Pension Fund!

Good for him (I will look for a smilie that takes its hat off!)

You and I are relatively lucky Maggie but in many schools I am convinced that the teaching job is far more stressful than the work of the average copper - we should have similar pension arrangements at the very least.

[Maggie Jarvis]

Andy I am not disagreeing at all - just suggesting that there are other pension arrangements that might be considered for those of us who are already in the 'nearing retirement' bracket.

If, like me and many other women teachers, you have had a career break to bring up your own children the current pension prospects do not look at all generous.

[Graham Davies]

The deal that I got under the teachers' pension scheme in 1993 (at the age of 51) was not that bad. I had 25 years of service under my belt, which was enhanced to 31.5 years under the then early retirement scheme. The aim of the enhancement was to encourage the dead wood to drop off and make room for new blood (if you will excuse the mixed metaphor). But the dead wood hung on, and people like myself, who were generating additional private income from writing and consultancy work, took the money and ran, as they saw an opportunity for expansion of their free-lance activities, cushioned by the early retirement lump sum (which enabled me to pay off my mortgage) and the regular income from the pension.

New blood was injected into the system, but it soon became obvious to the management that a teacher of 25-30 cannot do the same job as a teacher of 45-50. I was therefore called back to my institution as a part-time consultant to assist with the management of a number of externally funded projects that I had set up. So I ended up with a higher net income and far fewer days work!

When you retire you have to calculate in lots of different factors. There is a noticeable decrease in stress and you have extra free time to walk the dog, take longer holidays, etc, but you also spend less money. I spend most of my time at home in jeans and a tee-shirt. I rarely buy new smart clothes – they wear out more slowly – and I spend less money on cups of coffee and lunches. Above all, I don’t do a lot of travelling by car. I used to travel 25 miles each way to and from work – a journey that used to take 40-45 minutes when I started my last job in the early 1970s, but this time had increased to around 60-75 minutes by the time that I retired in 1993. So I gained at least two free hours each day, and my expenditure on petrol and maintenance took a nosedive. And now that my annual mileage is low I pay less for car insurance.

Finally, I don’t have to fight for salary increases. I just wait for the annual inflation-indexed rise to come through. Having reached 60 last year, I now get the 200 pounds winter fuel allowance. I also get cheap transport on local buses and trains, a discount on my green fees at the golf club and 10% off purchases at the local garden centre – I have more time for gardening too!

[John Simkin]

What finally drove me out of teaching was the mission-statement-oriented-new-management-control-freak mentality of the people in charge of my institution and the increasing flood of b*llsh*t emanating from government departments and their agencies.

It's amazing how often I hear that coming from UK-based teachers (my sister has recently broken out of a College of Education for many of the same reasons). When I taught in the UK at the end of the 1970s/beginning of the 1980s, I always thought that the powers-that-be ought to be a lot more concerned about the adverts in the TES from the 'teachers' escape committee', etc! Imagine if a modern industrial concern was faced with that phenomenon - they'd be a bit daft to just ignore it.

I suppose that line manager could have felt "good, another bit of dead wood cut away". It strikes me, though, that the teachers with the kind of experience that Graham and John seem to have are precisely the kind the systems should be trying to retain …

There is no doubt that those teachers trained in the 1960s and 1970s had a great deal of trouble adapting to the education system imposed on the profession since the 1980s. The more idealistic you were, the more problems you had with the reforms. That was also true of the most creative teachers who were attracted to the profession by the freedom that it gave them.

These people may have left the classroom but many remained committed to their belief in the importance of education. Thanks to the internet people like Graham and myself have remained in education. In fact, I would argue that my influence over the educational process is greater now than it was as a classroom teacher or as a successful textbook author. Government agencies even pay me good money to produce subversive teaching materials.

[Graham Davies]

In fact, I would argue that my influence over the educational process is greater now than it was as a classroom teacher or as a successful textbook author.

Yes, that's my view too. This is largely due to the Internet as a means of communication and as a public resource bank. I never wrote a successful textbook. My printed publications have largely been more theoretical - and they don't sell in huge numbers and certainly don't generate much income. But I can see from access records to the websites which I maintain that hundreds of teachers at least have a look at what I have written there (I can't tell how carefully they read it, of course). Most of my income now derives from running ICT training workshops and from software publications.

I started out as a secondary education teacher in the 1960s, when we were trusted to use our initiative and imagination. I moved into higher education in the 1970s, but I kept a foot in the secondary education camp by getting involved in in-service training, in the course of which I have visited many secondary schools all over the UK.

From the Thatcher era onwards teachers have ceased to be trusted by central government to do a proper job, hence the introduction of the National Curriculum which, frankly, I think has been a disaster in my subject area (Modern Foreign Languages). The sooner we fall in line with the Common European Framework for Languages the better, but may be too late for schools in England, more and more of which are abandoning the teaching of languages beyond KS3 - and that does not even take them as far as the lowest level of the Common European Framework. Let's see what happens in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland...

[Guest]

In the light of the revelations in this thread will people please stop sending the Education Forum food parcels for Graham and John

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