Teachers' Pension Calculator (2026/27)

What this calculator does, and why it's free

This tool projects your Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS) career average pot forward from today to your chosen retirement point, using your current pensionable salary, an assumption about future pay growth, and the official CARE accrual and revaluation mechanics that Teachers' Pensions actually applies. It's a planning tool, not a benefits statement — the only authoritative record of what you've built up so far is your annual Total Reward Statement from Teachers' Pensions. We've kept this calculator completely free, with no sign-up and no unlock fee, because understanding your own pension shouldn't sit behind a paywall; our more advanced Annual Allowance and McCloud Remedy tools involve enough extra modelling that a small one-off charge applies there instead.

How the career average (CARE) scheme actually works

Every teacher who has joined the profession since 1 April 2015 has built up their entire Teachers' Pension Scheme benefit under the CARE method, and since 1 April 2022 — following the McCloud remedy — every remaining active member, regardless of when they joined or how old they were in 2015, has been building up new benefits this way too. It works fundamentally differently from the final-salary scheme most older teachers started their careers under, and the difference matters for how you should think about your own numbers.

Step 1: each year adds its own slice of pension

At the end of each scheme year (the TPS scheme year runs 1 April to 31 March), 1/57th of that year's actual pensionable pay is added to your personal "CARE pot" — which is expressed not as a cash lump sum but directly as an amount of annual pension. So a teacher earning £42,600 in a given year adds £42,600 ÷ 57 = £747.37 of annual pension to their pot from that single year's service. Do this every year of a career and the slices accumulate into your eventual retirement income.

Step 2: the whole pot is revalued every September

Unlike a final-salary scheme, where inflation protection comes automatically from applying your final salary to your whole service history, a CARE pot needs its own built-in inflation protection, because early years' slices were calculated on pay that's now historic. Each September, the entire pot built up so far — including the slice just added for the year that's ended — is increased by CPI plus 1.6 percentage points. This "in-service revaluation" rate is more generous than the revaluation applied to a deferred pension (broadly CPI alone), which is one reason staying in active service, even in a lower-paid role, is usually better for your pension than leaving the scheme.

Worked example: projecting a CARE pension over 15 years

Take a teacher on £42,600 today with £8,000 already accrued in their CARE pot (as shown on their last Total Reward Statement), planning to retire in 15 years, assuming 2% average annual pay growth and the standard 4.5% illustrative long-run revaluation assumption this calculator defaults to (representing a long-term CPI+1.6% expectation, not a guarantee). In year one, their salary of £42,600 adds £747.37 to the pot, taking it to £8,747.37 before revaluation, and £9,141.00 after a 4.5% uplift. In year two, their salary has grown to £43,452, adding £762.32, and the running total is revalued again. Carried forward across all 15 years, with salary compounding upward each year and the whole pot revalued annually, the projection shows how both the new accrual and the compounding revaluation on everything already banked combine to grow the pot considerably faster than simply adding up 15 flat annual slices would suggest — this compounding effect is exactly what the calculator above models year by year, and you can see the full year-by-year breakdown once you enter your own numbers.

How promotions and TLRs change your projection

Because each year's CARE slice is based on that specific year's actual pensionable pay, a promotion or a new TLR payment doesn't retroactively improve your pension for years already worked — unlike a final-salary scheme, where a late promotion boosts your whole career's pension. Instead, it immediately increases the size of every future year's slice from the point the higher pay starts. A teacher who takes on a TLR2 worth £5,000 partway through their career adds a noticeably larger slice for every remaining year of service than they would have on their previous salary — but gets nothing extra for years already banked. This is actually one of the more teacher-friendly features of CARE: taking on a TLR, a Head of Department role or a leadership position in your 50s helps your pension from that point forward without needing decades of "qualifying service" at the higher rate the way some final-salary comparisons might suggest.

The flip side is worth knowing too: because TLRs, SEN allowances and other additions are fully pensionable (see our TLR payments explained guide for how they're taxed and pensioned), a large TLR landing in the same year as strong pay progression can meaningfully increase your Pension Input Amount for Annual Allowance purposes — see the next section, and our dedicated Annual Allowance Calculator, if your total package is approaching six figures.

Part-time service: how pro-rata pay affects your pot

The CARE scheme is genuinely fair to part-time teachers in a way final-salary schemes with fractional service credits sometimes weren't: because each year's slice is calculated directly from your actual pay rather than your full-time equivalent salary multiplied by a service fraction, a teacher working 0.6 FTE simply adds 1/57th of their real, pro-rata annual pay each year — there's no separate part-time adjustment needed. If you increase or reduce your contracted hours partway through a career, each year's slice simply reflects whatever you were actually paid that year, so moving to part-time doesn't need any special recalculation of past service the way it sometimes did historically.

Leaving teaching before retirement: deferred benefits

If you leave the Teachers' Pension Scheme — whether to leave the profession entirely, move to a non-teaching role, or take a break — with at least two years of qualifying service, your accrued CARE pot doesn't get paid out or lost. It becomes a "deferred benefit": frozen in the sense that no further accrual happens, but still protected against inflation every year via the Pensions Increase (Review) Order, broadly tracking CPI, until you reach your Normal Pension Age (which, under the CARE scheme, is linked to your State Pension Age) and choose to draw it. You can return to the scheme later in your career and your deferred pot sits alongside any new pension you build up, or in some circumstances the two periods can be linked together — Teachers' Pensions can confirm your specific position if you're planning a return.

Employer contributions: the part of your pension you never see deducted

Alongside your own contribution, your employer pays a substantial additional amount into the Teachers' Pension Scheme on your behalf — currently 28.68% of your pensionable pay, a rate set following the scheme's most recent formal valuation. This money never appears on your payslip and doesn't affect your take-home pay at all, which makes it easy to overlook entirely when weighing up the value of your job. But it's real money, funding real future income, and it's considerably higher than the employer contribution typically offered alongside a defined-contribution workplace pension in the private sector, where 3–8% is far more common. The calculator above totals up estimated employer contributions across your whole projection period alongside your own, specifically so this often-invisible part of your remuneration package is visible somewhere.

Why "assumed revaluation rate" is the biggest source of uncertainty

Of the two assumptions driving this projection, revaluation is genuinely unknowable in advance, while salary growth is at least partly within your own influence. CPI has fluctuated considerably over the past decade — from near-zero in some years to well above 10% during the 2022–23 inflation spike — and there's no reliable way to know what it will average over the remaining years of a long career. The calculator's default assumption represents a plausible long-run average, not a forecast, and it's genuinely worth running your numbers again with both a more cautious rate (say, 3%) and a more generous one (say, 6%) to see the realistic spread this produces in your final figure, rather than anchoring on a single number as if it were guaranteed. The gap between those two scenarios, compounded over a 20 or 30-year career, is often larger than people expect — a useful reminder that any pension projection this far out is a planning aid, not a prediction.

Where this projection can go wrong — and how to sense-check it

• Starting from a guessed opening balance instead of your Total Reward Statement. Always pull your real accrued pension figure from My Pension Online before projecting forward — a guess compounds error across every future year.
• Assuming a flat salary growth rate across a whole career. Real pay progression is lumpy — rapid early in a career as you move up the Main Pay Range, then flatter, then possibly a step change on promotion. Run the calculator more than once with different assumptions either side of your best guess to see a realistic range rather than a single misleadingly precise number.
• Ignoring the McCloud remedy period entirely. If any of your service falls between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022, that period is subject to a separate underpin choice — see our McCloud Remedy Calculator and our plain-English McCloud guide.
• Forgetting the Annual Allowance exists. A big projected pension growth in a single year — especially combined with a promotion or additional taxable income — can trigger an unexpected tax charge. Check our Annual Allowance Calculator if your pension growth or total income looks unusually high in any one tax year.

Normal Pension Age: why it isn't a fixed number any more

Under the legacy final-salary schemes, Normal Pension Age was a simple, fixed figure — 60 for the pre-2007 scheme, 65 for the 2007 scheme. Under CARE, it's deliberately linked to your State Pension Age, whatever that turns out to be for you personally. For most people currently mid-career, that means a Normal Pension Age of 67 or 68, though the exact figure depends on your date of birth and any future government changes to State Pension Age, which has already been reviewed and adjusted more than once since 2015. This matters for your projection in two ways: it determines how many years you have left to accrue new benefits (a directly editable input in the calculator above), and it determines when you can take your CARE pension without an early-retirement reduction. You can still choose to retire earlier than your Normal Pension Age, but doing so applies an actuarial reduction to your CARE pension for the rest of your life, to account for the longer period it will be in payment — so it's worth projecting your pot at both your realistic actual retirement age and your scheme Normal Pension Age to see the difference.

Lump sums under CARE: there's no automatic one

One of the most-asked questions from teachers moving from the legacy scheme mindset to CARE is "where's my lump sum?" Unlike the pre-2007 scheme, which paid an automatic tax-free lump sum of 3/80ths of final salary per year of service on top of the pension, CARE has no automatic lump sum built in at all — your accrued pension figure is purely an annual income entitlement. Most members can still choose to give up part of their annual pension in exchange for a tax-free lump sum at retirement (commonly referred to as "commutation"), at an exchange rate set by the scheme, but this is now an active choice you make at the point of retirement, not something calculated in automatically. This calculator's "estimated lump sum" figure illustrates one common approach to sizing a lump sum (converting a portion of the annual pension at a standard commutation rate), purely so you have a rough feel for the trade-off — your real commutation options and exact rates will be confirmed by Teachers' Pensions when you actually apply to retire.

Career breaks, maternity leave and reduced pay periods

Because each year's CARE slice is based on your actual pensionable pay for that specific scheme year, a period of reduced or unpaid leave affects your pot differently depending on the type of leave. During paid maternity, adoption, shared parental or paternity leave, you continue to accrue pension based on your normal pensionable pay, not your reduced actual pay — one of the more valuable, and often under-appreciated, protections built into the scheme. During a period of wholly unpaid leave (an unpaid career break, for example), you typically don't accrue further benefits unless you make arrangements to buy back the missing period, though your existing pot continues to be protected by revaluation. If you're planning a career break or extended parental leave, it's worth running your projection twice — once assuming a short pause in accrual, and once assuming continuous accrual at your normal pay — to see the realistic range this creates in your eventual pension, and to check the specific rules that applied during your leave with Teachers' Pensions or your school's HR team.

How to read the year-by-year table the calculator produces

Once you run the calculator, look closely at the year-by-year breakdown rather than just the final number. Each row shows that year's salary, the accrual added from that year's pay, the pot's value before that September's revaluation, and the pot's value after revaluation. Two patterns are worth watching for: first, how the "accrual added" figure grows each year purely because your assumed salary is growing — this is the part directly within your control through career progression; and second, how the gap between "pot before revaluation" and "pot after revaluation" grows every year in cash terms even at a constant percentage rate, because it's being applied to an ever-larger base — this compounding effect on your existing pot, not just new accrual, is usually the single biggest driver of the eventual total over a long career, and it's one many teachers underestimate when they picture their pension as simply "1/57th of pay, added up".

How this fits with the rest of your teacher pay picture

Your Teachers' Pension is one part of a wider pay and reward package that's worth looking at together. Use our Take-Home Pay Calculator to see exactly how much comes off your payslip for your current contribution tier, our TLR Calculator to see what a specific responsibility payment is really worth once pension and tax are accounted for, and our Teachers' Pension Scheme 2015 explained guide for a fuller walkthrough of scheme rules beyond what fits on this page.