PRIVATE schools should have their charitable status removed if they continue with fire-and-rehire policies, NASUWT head Patrick Roach has demanded.

Speaking at the union’s annual conference in Birmingham on Sunday, the general secretary criticised “bad bosses who believe it’s OK to threaten teachers with the sack in order to drive down their wages and living standards.”

Teachers at the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), a group of 23 private schools, went on strike earlier this year over their schools’ withdrawal from the national Teachers’ Pension Scheme.

In March, the GDST said that teachers would be able to stay in the scheme if they are already part of it, but new teachers would not be, and withdrew its fire-and-rehire threat.

Dr Roach said that among private schools there was a “growing list of shame,” including the GDST, where schools were “vying to strip teachers of their pension rights without the slightest justification for doing so.”

He said the union had asked the Department for Education to issue guidance to schools advising against the use of so-called fire and rehire policies and to publish information on schools and colleges that had used this policy.

But he said ministers had refused to do this, and that it was “not good enough” for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to simply say that the use of fire and rehire was unacceptable, “whether in independent schools or the shameful actions by bosses at P&O Ferries.”

Mr Roach called on the Independent Schools Council, a leading body of private schools, to help NASUWT deal with the issue of “gun to the head” employment practices.

“But, if they won’t, and if these schools continue their shoddy treatment of the workforce, then the public seriously needs to question whether these schools should continue to benefit from public contracts or tax subsidies,” he said.

“[Arbitration service] Acas have been very clear: you don’t put fire and rehire, dismissal and re-engagement on the table while you’re at the same time consulting over changes to workers’ terms and conditions,” he said.

He said he had written to ministers asking them to intervene and remind employers what Acas had said, and that if further industrial action was needed, then “that’s the way it’s got to be.”