Headteachers vote overwhelmingly in favour of strike ballot over pensions

National Association of Head Teachers on course for first ever national strike in protest at cuts to public sector pensions

Headteachers have voted overwhelmingly for a ballot on holding their first ever national strike.

At their annual conference in Brighton, members of Britain's biggest headteachers' union ? the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) ? agreed to vote on whether to take industrial action in protest at proposed changes to their pensions. From 386 votes, 99.6% wanted a ballot, while 0.4% abstained.

The NAHT said it was "highly likely" that heads would now ballot for a strike ? a move that would close thousands of primary and secondary schools in England and Wales.

The proposed pension changes have set headteachers and teachers on a collision course with government. Last month, two of the country's main teaching unions voted to ballot members for a national strike over the reforms.

The National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers are likely to strike in June and again in the autumn. Lecturers staged a walkout over the same issue in March.

A government-commissioned report in March by the former Labour minister Lord Hutton called for final salary pension schemes to be scrapped and replaced by career averages. He recommended that teachers should pay higher monthly contributions and a rise in the retirement age to 68.

At the moment, most heads retire aged between 60 and 65. The government has forecast that the cost of teachers' pensions will rise from about �5bn in 2005 to almost �10bn by 2015, as more staff retire and life expectancy increases.

Russell Hobby, the NAHT's general secretary, said the proposed pension reforms would amount to a major pay cut and encouraged his 28,000 members to vote in favour of a strike. He said it was essential the career average pension remained and predicted a "mass exodus" from the profession, if it did not. Last time the teachers' pension scheme was changed, in 2007, there was a spike in the number of retirements.

Chris Howard, headteacher of Lewis secondary school in Caerphilly, said a pension was an "integral part of the pay bargain that every public sector worker makes with the government".

"We do jobs that other people don't want to do. The bargain we make is that we give ourselves and our service as public servants for our life and in the end we expect some time where we can accrue public benefit for that. If the government proceeds down this path of pension changes then the bargain will be broken and our society will be the poorer for it."

Chris Hill, headteacher of Hounslow Town primary in London, said that if the pension changes went ahead, heads should look into refusing to co-operate with the government over new initiatives. "We can be very effective in getting our way," he said.

David Fann, headteacher of Sherwood primary in Preston, Lancashire, said teachers pensions were "not gold-plated". He said heads on �50,000 would have to increase their pension contributions by �1,700 a month and if they retired at 55, they would lose 42% of their pension.

Stephen Kirkpatrick, a 36-year-old deputy headteacher in Salford, said that although he loved teaching, he would be prepared to quit if the reforms went ahead. "That is a mindset common to people who are young in the profession."

The government is expected to announced its proposals for pensions in June following negotiations with the Trades Union Congress.

A spokesman from the Department for Education said no decisions had been taken on changes to the teacher pension scheme, but that the Hutton report "made it clear that pensions reform was needed". "A major factor is that people are living longer," he said. "In the early 1970s, the life expectancy of a 60-year-old was around 18 years, now it is around 28 years. The government will set out proposals in the autumn that are affordable, sustainable and fair to both the public sector workforce and taxpayers."

Meanwhile, the NAHT voted overwhelmingly to ballot its membership over whether to repeat last year's boycott of national exams for 10- and 11-year-olds unless the government radically reformed the tests. The government is conducting a review of the tests in maths and English, known as Sats, and will publish its findings next month.

Heads said that unless the government changed the tests so that teachers marked their pupils' papers, they would repeat the boycott. At the moment, external markers correct the tests, rather than pupils' teachers. Some 99.2% of delegates voted to ballot the membership over a boycott.

Jessica Shepherd

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