Abstract—: The flexural rigidity of a thin elastic multilayer plate with transversely isotropic layers is considered. If the rigidity of the layers is very different, the classical model based on the hypothesis of a straight normal is not applicable and the effect of lateral shear must be taken into account. Two models for taking into account the effect of transverse shear for a multilayer plate are compared. The first of them, based on the distribution of tangential deformations over the thickness of the plate, was proposed in the work of E. I. Grigolyuk and G. M. Kulikov in 1988. The second model uses an asymptotic expansion of the solution of three-dimensional equations of elasticity theory in powers of a small thin-walled parameter. The errors of the models are estimated by comparison with the exact solution of the three-dimensional test problem.