Teachers' Pension

The Teachers' Pension Scheme is one of the largest and most valuable public sector pensions in the country, covering teachers in state-funded schools across England and Wales, along with many staff in independent schools, academies and further education colleges who opt in. Since April 2015 it has run on a career average basis, meaning your pension builds up as a series of annual slices based on your actual salary each year, rather than being based on your final salary alone. Understanding how that calculation works, how part-time service is treated, and what happens if you leave the profession or want to move your benefits elsewhere are among the most common questions teachers have about their retirement provision.

This hub brings together our detailed guides on the Teachers' Pension Scheme, starting with a plain-English explanation of what the scheme actually is and how it fits together, moving through a fully worked example of the career average calculation itself, and covering the particular considerations that apply if all or part of your career has involved part-time working. Many teachers also want to understand transfer values, whether they are considering leaving teaching for another sector, moving into a different public sector pension, or simply want to know what their accrued benefits would be worth if converted into a cash equivalent transfer value; while a full standalone transfer guide is on our roadmap, our explained guide below covers the essentials of deferred benefits and what a transfer decision actually involves.

Because the scheme also underwent a significant reform in 2015, followed by the McCloud remedy affecting service between 2015 and 2022, many longer-serving teachers now have benefits split across legacy final salary sections and the newer career average scheme, sometimes further complicated by a choice of which basis applies to their remedy-period service. Our guides below explain each of these pieces individually, so whether you are newly qualified and just want to understand your payslip deduction, or a long-serving teacher trying to make sense of a mixed pension record ahead of retirement, you should find a clear, practical answer.

Whichever stage of your career you're at, it's worth reviewing your Annual Benefit Statement through the Teachers' Pensions online service at least once a year, both to track how your pension is building up and to catch any discrepancies in your recorded service history while they are still easy to correct. This is particularly important if your career has included any part-time years, breaks in service, or a change of employer, since these are the details most likely to need checking. The guides below are designed to complement, not replace, your own official statement and any correspondence you receive directly from Teachers' Pensions, particularly around the ongoing McCloud remedy process, which is progressively working through affected members' records and may require you to make a choice about how a period of your service is treated.