What this calculator does
The McCloud remedy gives every affected teacher a one-off choice — the Deferred Choice Underpin — over how their service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 is valued: under their old final-salary legacy scheme, or under the 2015 CARE scheme. This tool puts illustrative numbers on both sides of that choice, so you can see roughly how far apart they are and which factors move them, using figures you enter yourself.
It doesn't explain the remedy from scratch. For the origin of the 2018 judgment, why the remedy period is capped at seven years, how the Deferred Choice Underpin works in full, and the current position on statement delivery, read our McCloud remedy explained guide — ideally before you use this page, because the concepts genuinely matter more than the arithmetic. Everything below is about operating the tool and reading its output correctly.
This is education, not your decision
Is this calculator relevant to you?
There's a quick test worth applying before you spend any time on the inputs. You have something to compare only if you were an active member of the Teachers' Pension Scheme at some point between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 and you had pensionable service before 1 April 2015 — meaning you were already in a legacy scheme when the reforms happened. If you joined teaching for the first time after April 2015, you were never in a legacy scheme, there is no choice to make, and this tool has nothing to compare for you. The same is true if you left the scheme entirely before April 2015 and never returned.
~7 years
Maximum service the comparison can cover (April 2015 – March 2022)
What to prepare before you start
Four inputs, and the accuracy of your result depends almost entirely on the last two.
| Calculator input | Where to get it, and what to watch for |
|---|---|
| Years of service in the remedy period | Count only pensionable service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022, capped at seven. If you worked part-time, use full-time equivalent years — four years at 0.6 counts as 2.4, not 4. |
| Projected final pensionable salary at retirement | Your best estimate of full-time equivalent salary when you actually retire, not your salary today and not your part-time actual pay. Legacy benefits are calculated on the full-time equivalent rate. |
| Legacy scheme you'd have been in | Pre-2007 if you first joined the scheme before 1 January 2007; the 2007 scheme if you joined on or after that date and before April 2015. Your Annual Benefit Statement states which. |
| CARE pension for the same remedy-period years | The slice accrued between 2015 and 2022 only — not your whole CARE pension. Approximate it from the difference between your accrued CARE pension at 31 March 2022 and at 31 March 2015, or estimate it with our Teachers' Pension Calculator. |
The input that skews results most often
Entering your total CARE pension rather than the 2015–2022 portion is the single most common mistake on this tool, and it biases the answer heavily towards CARE — often by enough to reverse the headline. Anyone still teaching has been accruing CARE continuously since April 2022, so today's total can be considerably larger than the remedy-period slice the comparison is actually about. If your result says CARE wins by a wide margin, check this input first.
How to read each output field
Likely better option
The headline verdict: "legacy scheme", "CARE scheme", or "too close to call". The last of these appears when the two annual pension figures land within roughly 2% of each other — a margin narrow enough that your own input assumptions, rather than any real difference, are deciding the answer. Importantly, this verdict is based on annual pension only; any automatic lump sum is reported separately and isn't weighed into it.
Legacy scheme annual pension (this period)
Your remedy-period service valued on final salary: years × final salary ÷ 60 for the 2007 scheme, or ÷ 80 for the pre-2007 scheme. Because it multiplies by your projected retirement salary, this figure is highly sensitive to that input — worth re-running with a salary a few thousand pounds either side to see how much the answer actually depends on your projection.
Legacy scheme automatic lump sum
This row appears only if you selected the pre-2007 scheme, which pays an automatic tax-free lump sum of 3/80ths of final salary per year of service on top of the annual pension. It is deliberately excluded from the headline verdict and the difference figure, because there's no universally correct way to trade a one-off cash sum against guaranteed lifetime income — that judgement is yours.
CARE scheme annual pension (this period)
Simply the figure you entered, repeated back for comparison. The tool doesn't recalculate it, which is precisely why getting that input right matters so much.
Difference
The absolute gap between the two annual pension figures, shown without a plus or minus sign — the "likely better option" row above tells you which way it runs. Read it as an amount per year for life, not a one-off: a £900 difference over a 25-year retirement is a materially different proposition to how small it looks alongside a salary.
The AI McCloud Advisor
Worked example 1: reading a clear legacy result
A head of department with the full 7 years of remedy-period service expects to retire on a final pensionable salary of £57,500. They joined the scheme in 2009, so they select the 2007 scheme (1/60ths). Working from their old Benefit Statements, they estimate the CARE pension accrued across those specific years at £5,450.
The legacy figure comes out at £57,500 × 7 ÷ 60 = £6,708 a year. Against £5,450 of CARE, the difference row reads roughly £1,258 and the headline reads "legacy scheme". No lump sum row appears, because the 2007 scheme doesn't provide one automatically.
What the output is really telling them is that their salary grew faster after 2022 than during the remedy period itself — which is exactly the pattern final-salary calculations reward, since the legacy figure applies their eventual retirement salary to all seven of those years while CARE captured only what they actually earned at the time. The £1,258 gap is wide enough (well beyond the 2% band) that it wouldn't flip on a modest change to their salary projection. The useful follow-up is to re-run it with a lower assumed final salary to see where the verdict would change — at around £46,700 the two sides converge.
Worked example 2: reading a "too close to call" result
A part-time teacher has 4.5 full-time equivalent years inside the remedy period, a projected full-time equivalent final salary of £46,000, and joined the scheme in 2003, so selects the pre-2007 scheme (1/80ths). Their estimated CARE pension for those years is £2,600.
The legacy annual pension comes out at £46,000 × 4.5 ÷ 80 = £2,588 — about £12 a year below the CARE figure, comfortably inside the 2% band, so the headline reads "too close to call". On annual pension alone, there is genuinely nothing to choose between them at this level of precision.
But the row underneath changes the picture completely: an automatic lump sum of £46,000 × 4.5 × 3 ÷ 80 = £7,762.50, paid tax-free, available under the legacy option and not under CARE. This is the clearest demonstration of why the headline verdict shouldn't be read in isolation — the tool is telling you the annual pensions are level, while a five-figure tax-free sum sits entirely on one side of the comparison.
A close call deserves scrutiny, not a coin flip
What this calculator deliberately doesn't model
- Lump sum commutation. Swapping annual pension for a larger tax-free lump sum is available under both the 2007 scheme and CARE, and can be layered on top of the pre-2007 automatic lump sum. Whether it's a good deal depends on how you value income against cash — a personal trade-off, not a calculation.
- Normal Pension Age differences. The pre-2007 scheme's NPA of 60, the 2007 scheme's 65, and CARE's link to State Pension Age all affect when benefits can be taken without an early retirement reduction. For someone planning to retire early, that timing can matter as much as the headline amount, and nothing in this comparison reflects it.
- Ill-health and death benefits. These differ between the schemes and aren't compared here.
- Your real revaluation history. The CARE side is whatever you typed in, not a year-by-year rebuild from actual pay and actual revaluation rates.
Your Remediable Service Statement is what actually decides this
Teachers' Pensions issues a Remediable Service Statement to every affected member, setting out real service, real historic pay for each remedy-period year, and a precise calculation of both options — including commutation choices applied to your own numbers. That document, not this tool, is what your decision should rest on, and for most people the choice itself isn't exercised until remedy-period benefits are put into payment at retirement.
If you're waiting for yours and want to know where the programme currently stands, what that means for a retirement application, and how to escalate if the delay is causing you real difficulty, our guide covers the current position in detail: Remediable Service Statement delivery and delays. We keep that section up to date in one place rather than repeating a status here that would quietly go stale.
Where to go next
For the full McCloud story — the judgment, the remedy period, the Deferred Choice Underpin and the implementation timeline — see our McCloud remedy explained guide. For how the CARE scheme you're building benefits in now works day to day, see Teachers' Pension Scheme 2015 explained. And if a remedy-period recalculation has changed your pension growth figures for a past tax year, our Annual Allowance Calculator and Annual Allowance guide cover whether it affects your tax position.
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Estimate only — verify before relying on this
Frequently asked questions
Is legacy or CARE better for teachers under McCloud? +
It depends on how your pay changed. Legacy final salary benefits tend to win if your pensionable salary rose substantially during or after 2015 to 2022, because they are based on your final salary. Career average (CARE) tends to win if your pay was fairly flat, or lower in the remedy period than at retirement. Normal Pension Age and the automatic lump sum matter too. This calculator compares the two for your own figures.
When do teachers choose between legacy and CARE? +
When your remedy-period benefits are put into payment, which for most teachers is at retirement. The choice is made using the Remediable Service Statement Teachers' Pensions issues, and it covers all of your 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 service as one block: you cannot pick legacy for some years and CARE for others.
Do I need to do anything about McCloud now? +
Most serving teachers don't. The remedy is applied automatically, and the choice comes at retirement. Check with Teachers' Pensions that your Remediable Service Statement has been issued if you are close to retiring, applying for ill-health retirement, or have deferred benefits. Teachers who retired between 2015 and 2022 are covered too, and are being recalculated automatically.
Which four figures do I need before I can use this calculator? +
Your years of pensionable service falling inside 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 (maximum seven, expressed as full-time equivalent if you worked part-time); your projected final pensionable salary at retirement, in full-time equivalent terms; which legacy scheme you were in before 2015 — the 2007 scheme or the older pre-2007 scheme; and the CARE pension already built up for those same remedy-period years specifically. The last one is the hardest to pin down, and it's the input most likely to skew your result if you guess at it.
How do I work out the CARE figure for just the remedy-period years? +
It's the slice of your career average pot built up between April 2015 and March 2022 only — not your total CARE pension today, which also includes everything accrued since April 2022. If you have Annual Benefit Statements going back that far, the difference between your accrued CARE pension as at 31 March 2022 and as at 31 March 2015 is a good approximation. Failing that, our free Teachers' Pension Calculator can estimate the portion built up across those specific years. Entering your whole CARE pension instead will make CARE look far better than it really is for the comparison.
I don't know which legacy scheme I was in. How can I tell? +
It comes down to when you first joined the Teachers' Pension Scheme. Members who joined before 1 January 2007 are in the pre-2007 arrangement (1/80ths accrual with an automatic 3/80ths lump sum, Normal Pension Age 60); members who joined on or after that date but before 1 April 2015 are in the 2007 arrangement (1/60ths, no automatic lump sum, NPA 65). Your Annual Benefit Statement and My Pension Online record both show which applies to you. Because the two produce materially different results, check rather than guess — and if you joined the profession after 1 April 2015, you have no legacy scheme at all and this calculator has nothing to compare for you.
What does 'too close to call' mean in the result? +
The tool reports 'too close to call' when the legacy and CARE annual pension figures land within about 2% of each other. At that margin, small changes to your assumed final salary or to the CARE figure you entered can flip which option looks better, so the headline isn't telling you anything reliable. Treat it as a prompt to wait for your official Remediable Service Statement rather than as a genuine tie — and if you're in the pre-2007 scheme, remember the automatic lump sum sits outside that annual-pension comparison entirely.
Does the 'Difference' row include the legacy lump sum? +
No. The difference shown is purely the gap between the two annual pension figures, as an absolute amount. If you selected the pre-2007 scheme, the automatic lump sum is displayed as its own separate row and is not folded into the comparison, because there's no objectively correct exchange rate between a one-off cash sum and a guaranteed income for life — how you weigh those against each other is a personal judgement the tool can't make for you.
Does this calculator account for lump sum commutation? +
No, deliberately. Commutation — giving up some annual pension for a larger tax-free lump sum — interacts differently with each of the benefit structures being compared, and modelling it accurately would need assumptions about your personal preference for cash versus income that this tool can't know. It compares annual pension income directly, and shows automatic lump sums separately where they exist.
Is this calculator free, or does it need an unlock? +
Comparing legacy and CARE benefit structures accurately involves enough moving parts that full results are behind a one-off £29.99 unlock, the same model as our Annual Allowance Calculator — no subscription, pay once. Given that the real-world decision this mirrors is a genuinely high-value, one-off choice about your retirement income, most people find it a worthwhile way to understand the shape of their own numbers before their real Remediable Service Statement arrives.
Should I make my real decision based on this calculator? +
No — please don't. This is an educational, simplified comparison built entirely from figures you enter yourself, to help you understand the mechanics of the choice you'll eventually face. Your actual Deferred Choice Underpin decision should be based on the official Remediable Service Statement Teachers' Pensions issues, which uses your real, complete service record, real historic salaries and the scheme's own precise methodology — including commutation options and Normal Pension Age effects this tool doesn't model.
Related guides
McCloud Remedy Explained
The full story of the 2018 judgment, the remedy, and the current position on statements.
Teachers' Pension Scheme 2015 Explained
How CARE accrual and revaluation work today.
Annual Allowance Calculator
Check whether a McCloud recalculation affects your tax position.
Teachers' Pension Calculator
Project your ongoing CARE pension for free.