Your employer puts 28.68% into your teachers’ pension — here is what it actually buys you.
28.68% is the highest employer pension contribution of any large UK scheme. It is also the most misunderstood number in teaching, because it is not what you get. Here is what you do get, on the 2026/27 figures.
The employer contribution to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is 28.68% of pensionable pay in England and Wales, and 26% in Scotland.
The legal minimum for an automatic enrolment pension is 3%, and only on the slice of earnings between £6,240 and £50,270. Set side by side:
Employer contribution a year: TPS against the auto-enrolment minimum
pay point pay auto-enrolment 3% TPS 28.68% TPS is
M1 £34,069 £835 £9,771 11.7x
M6 £46,940 £1,221 £13,462 11.0x
U1 £49,134 £1,287 £14,092 11.0x
U3 £52,835 £1,321 £15,153 11.5x
M6 inner London £54,131 £1,321 £15,525 11.8x
U3 inner London £64,684 £1,321 £18,551 14.0xA teacher at the top of the main scale has £13,462 a year going into their pension from their employer. A private sector employee on the same salary, at the statutory minimum, would have £1,221.
What 28.68% is not
Here is where most articles about this go wrong, and it matters.
In a defined contribution pension, the employer contribution is your money. It lands in your pot, it is invested, and a bigger percentage means a bigger pot. If your employer paid 28.68% into a workplace pot you would be extraordinarily well off.
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme is not that. It is defined benefit. What you receive is fixed by a formula, and no part of the 28.68% changes it. The employer rate is the actuary’s estimate of what the promise costs to fund, including the cost of past shortfalls. It is a measure of how expensive the pension is to provide, not a measure of what you personally accrue.
So the correct reading of 28.68% is this: the government’s own actuaries price this pension at roughly twenty-nine pence in the pound of pay. That is a strong signal of value, and it is the right number to quote when someone says teaching is badly paid. It is the wrong number to use to work out your retirement income.
For that, there are only two figures that matter.
1/57th, and CPI plus 1.6%
Since 2015 the scheme has been career average. Each year you accrue a pension of 1/57th of that year’s pensionable earnings, and that slice belongs to you for life from your normal pension age.
One year of service, pension earned for life
M1 £34,069 / 57 = £598 a year
M6 £46,940 / 57 = £824 a year
U1 £49,134 / 57 = £862 a year
U3 £52,835 / 57 = £927 a year
U3 inner London £64,684 / 57 = £1,135 a yearThen every slice already earned is revalued each April while you remain an active member, at CPI plus 1.6%.
That 1.6% above inflation is the engine of the whole scheme. On 6 April 2026 the revaluation applied was 5.4%: September 2025 CPI of 3.8%, plus 1.6%. Every pound of pension a teacher had already built up grew by 5.4% that morning, whatever happened to their pay.
A teacher with £20,000 of accrued pension gained £1,080 a year of future income in April without teaching an extra lesson for it.
What it costs you
Member contributions are tiered on actual pensionable pay, from 7.4% to 12% in England and Wales. They come off before income tax, so the relief is automatic and the net cost is lower than the deduction on the payslip.
M6, £46,940, England, 2026/27
Employee pays 8.9% £4,178 a year
after income tax relief £3,342 a year
Employer pays 28.68% £13,462 a year
Total into the scheme £17,640 a year = 37.6% of pay
Employer's share 76%A teacher on the top of the main scale contributes £3,342 net and buys £824 a year of inflation-protected income for life. Three quarters of the cost is carried by someone else.
Teachers against the NHS: the fair comparison
These are the two big public service career average schemes and they are frequently assumed to be identical. They are not, and neither is simply better.
Teachers (TPS) NHS (2015 Scheme)
Accrual rate 1/57th 1/54th
Revaluation, active CPI + 1.6% CPI + 1.5%
April 2026 revaluation 5.4% 5.3%
Employer contribution 28.68% 23.7%
Member contributions 7.4% to 12% 5.2% to 12.5%
Normal pension age State Pension age State Pension ageThe NHS accrues faster. At the same £46,940 salary, a year of service buys £869 of pension in the NHS scheme against £824 in the teachers’ scheme, a difference of £45 a year for every year worked.
Teachers get the better revaluation, but the margin is thin. The extra 0.1% above CPI, compounded across a 38-year career, recovers only about 3.9% of that gap. On accrual, the NHS scheme stays ahead.
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What teachers have instead is a lower entry contribution rate, 7.4% against the NHS 5.2% at the very bottom but a flatter climb through the middle, and an employer contribution five percentage points higher. The last of those, as above, tells you what the promise costs rather than what you receive. Anyone moving between the two sectors should compare 1/57th against 1/54th, not 28.68% against 23.7%.
Legacy service still sets your retirement age
Everyone active is building up in the career average scheme now, but final salary service keeps its own rules, and which one you have determines the shape of the benefit as much as the size.
Normal pension age 60 1/80th a year, plus an automatic lump sum of 3x the pension
Normal pension age 65 1/60th a year, no automatic lump sum
Career average 1/57th a year, revalued CPI+1.6%, NPA = State Pension ageIn Scotland the split is by join date: a normal pension age of 60 for members who joined before 1 April 2007, and 65 for those who joined on or after it.
20 years of service, average salary £52,835
NPA 60 arrangement pension £13,209 a year plus automatic lump sum £39,626
NPA 65 arrangement pension £18,933 a year no automatic lump sumThe NPA 65 arrangement pays a considerably larger pension; the NPA 60 arrangement pays less but hands over a tax-free lump sum of three times the pension without being asked, and pays out five years earlier.
That last point is the one that has quietly changed the deal for everybody who started teaching recently. A teacher on the old arrangements had a normal pension age of 60. In the career average scheme it is your State Pension age, which for anyone born from 1978 is currently 68. The same career, eight years longer before the pension is payable in full.
Going early, and the 2028 date
You can take the pension from 55 with an actuarial reduction. Between 65 and your normal pension age the standard reduction is 0.25% for each complete month, which is 3% a year, applied for a maximum of 36 months, with a further factor applied by reference to your age at retirement.
The date to know is 6 April 2028, when the normal minimum pension age rises from 55 to 57.
There is an important protection attached to it. Members with service in the final salary or career average scheme up to 3 November 2021 keep the right to take actuarially adjusted retirement from 55. Anyone who joined after 3 November 2021 has a minimum age of 57. If you have been teaching since before November 2021 and have built a plan around going at 55, that plan survives; if you started after it, it does not.
What this is worth
A teacher who starts on M1 in their twenties and finishes on the upper pay range, running to a normal pension age of 68, is looking at a career average pension in the region of £48,000 a year in today’s terms, or roughly £4,000 a month before tax, with the option of exchanging some of it for a tax-free lump sum. On top of that sits the State Pension.
It is deferred pay, and a great deal of it. It does not help with a mortgage this year, which is a fair complaint and the reason teacher pay disputes are about salary rather than pensions. But any comparison of teaching against a private sector job that ignores 28.68% is not a comparison of the same thing.
How we calculated this
- 2026/27 figures. Member contribution tiers 7.4% to 12% in England and Wales, assessed on actual annual pensionable pay; Scotland runs its own tiers from 7.35%. Employer contribution 28.68% (Teachers’ Pensions, England and Wales) and 26% (SPPA, Scotland).
- Career average scheme: 1/57th accrual, revalued for active members at CPI plus 1.6%. The revaluation applied on 6 April 2026 was 5.4%, being September 2025 CPI of 3.8% plus 1.6%, per HM Treasury’s revaluation statement.
- Final salary arrangements: 1/80th with an automatic lump sum of three times the pension at a normal pension age of 60; 1/60th with no automatic lump sum at 65. Career average normal pension age is State Pension age with a floor of 65.
- Early retirement: a standard reduction of 0.25% a month for up to 36 months between 65 and normal pension age, plus the relevant actuarial factor, per the Government Actuary’s Department guidance the scheme cites.
- Normal minimum pension age 55, rising to 57 on 6 April 2028, with protection for members who had service up to 3 November 2021.
- Pay points are the 2026/27 STPCD figures for England; the NHS comparison uses the 2026/27 Agenda for Change rates and NHS Pension Scheme rules.
- Auto-enrolment comparison uses the statutory minimum employer contribution of 3% of qualifying earnings, the band £6,240 to £50,270, per GOV.UK.
- Figures are produced by the same engine that powers the site’s calculators, which quotes its source beside each rule rather than applying rates by hand.
You can model your own position, including legacy service and retiring early or late, with our teachers’ pension calculator. Every pay point, all four England areas plus Wales and Scotland, is on the teacher pay scales page, and what actually reaches your account each month is on the teacher take-home pay calculator. If you are weighing the two big public schemes against each other, the NHS pension calculator is the other side of the comparison. Every rate and rule is sourced and dated on the methodology page.
Figures are estimates for guidance, not financial advice. Pension decisions in the UK are regulated by the FCA; Teachers’ Pensions and SPPA provide official benefit statements.
Published by UK Pay Calculators. Rates and scheme rules checked September 2026, and re-checked every April.
