Recently retired or considering retirement in the near future? Make sure you don't lose your union protection and the benefits that came with your NAHT membership by transferring to NAHT Life.
Act fast - to be eligible for life membership, you must apply within six months of the date of your retirement from a school leadership role.
Life membership grants you access to:
Read more and apply for life membership
Life member FAQs
When to start considering NAHT life membership
To qualify for the benefits of NAHT Life membership you must join NAHT Life within six months of leaving full time service.
But preparation for retirement doesn’t start the day you leave work. For example, we work with NAHT partners to provide webinars and advice on how to invest your lump sum, and this work can start as early as the age of 40.
How we support you in retirement
Whether leaving a labour of love or embracing a life of leisure, there can be no doubt that retirement from school leadership marks a huge change in lifestyle.
NAHT is here to help you with the transition from having a very busy school leadership role to potentially having time to fill, and perhaps even experiencing less of a sense of belonging than when you were in work.
We provide support in terms of pensions, ideas for using your time and preparation for the next phase of your life.
We also recognise that, while the organisational structures of school might no longer be there, you may still want to be part of a wider group of retired professionals who support members or just meet up socially. Life membership is about bringing all of those opportunities into one place.
Trade union benefits in retirement
NAHT Life provides retired members with the same excellent trade union services as they received when they were in post. It allows you to continue to play an active volunteer role within NAHT regions and branches, if that’s what you choose to do, so that NAHT and its members can continue to benefit from your experience in the same way that you will have benefited from experienced leaders and NAHT members in the past.
From time to time life members need their trade union to support them over historic cases stemming back to their school career and NAHT can only do this work if you’re a life member. With the cost of a Barrister upwards of £300 per day it makes sense to ask your trade union to protect you.
To ensure that you don’t miss out on all of the rich reservoir of resource available to life members, please ensure NAHT has your correct post-retirement contact details.
Life Members' Sector Council
The Life Members' Sector Council is essentially the national body for life member decision making and helps to support the national executive and staff in understanding and supporting life member matters.
Life members, if elected, can represent their peers in life membership at Regional and Branch level.
Essentially, the value of life members working in branches and regions is as follows:
Proposed remit of life members on the branch and regional executive
- To act as a source of experience and expertise to aid continuity of knowledge of the union and its work, including an in-depth knowledge of the MOPP and constitution.
- To support the development of the branch and regional executive committee through mentoring and training (passing on the culture that may have been lost during Covid)
- To support the log of casework in the branch, building on and passing on their knowledge to new branch executive members.
- To potentially be trained in supervision to support members.
- To support the development of a life member community, bringing together life members who have retired to avoid isolation and help them to support regional and branch activity.
- To monitor (using their local knowledge) those about to or who have retired to ensured these members have the full protection of the union through life membership.
Life member resources