Planned strike action from teachers at 23 private schools has been suspended this week pending talks between their employer and the NEU teaching union.
Teacher members of the NEU at independent schools within the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST) first went on strike last month in opposition to their employer’s plan to withdraw from the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS).
Strikes were due to continue this week, but the GDST and the NEU have now agreed to hold collective conciliation talks mediated by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), a government-run body.
GDST teachers will return to the classroom while the talks are going on.
Negotiations between the two parties have been held throughout the past few weeks, but industrial action has continued, with strikes taking place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week.
Teacher strike over pensions halted
The NEU said a similar pattern of strikes had been planned for this week as well, but this will no longer happen after the agreement to negotiate.
Last month the GDST tabled an offer to allow staff to stay in the TPS until September 2023.
It then tabled a new offer that it said gave teachers a choice between continued membership of the TPS, under what it calls “favourable terms”, or joining a separate GDST pension plan.
But the NEU refused to cancel industrial action because it said the proposals appeared “to have unknown strings attached”.
This morning a GDST spokesperson said it was approaching the ACAS collective conciliation talks “with confidence that we can move forward from this point and find a way through this together”.
“The important thing is that all GDST teachers will return to their classrooms whilst these talks proceed, as the education of our students is our priority,” they added.
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said the suggestion of talks with ACAS had come from the union, and that GDST had agreed to attend “in full knowledge” that strike action was based on an “extraordinary mandate”.
She added: “The NEU has initiated all the negotiation meetings with the trust to try and resolve the dispute. It is in everyone’s interest - teachers, students and parents alike - to find a satisfactory solution at the earliest possible point.”
Members of the NEU working at schools in the GDST voted to strike in opposition to their employer’s plans to leave the TPS earlier this year.
Scores of private schools have left the TPS over the past two years since the government raised the rate of employers’ contributions by 43 per cent in 2019. State schools were covered for the increase but private schools were not.
