Teacher Maternity Pay and Pension Explained (2026/27)

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Teacher maternity pay is one of those subjects where the raw information genuinely does exist, but never in one place. The pay bands sit in the Burgundy Book, a national conditions-of-service agreement most teachers have heard of and few have actually opened. The statutory floor underneath those bands is set by HMRC and changes every April. The pension treatment sits in a set of 2014 regulations written in language that makes a straightforward answer surprisingly hard to extract. And the question teachers most often ask on forums — does my pension keep building while I'm off? — is answered in one direction by the Burgundy Book, in another by your payslip, and correctly by neither on its own.

This guide pulls the three strands together. The Burgundy Book and pension strands apply across England and Wales alike; the salary figures used are England's STPCD points, so Welsh readers should substitute the equivalent point from our Wales pay scales guide. In order: the pay structure week by week, the pension accrual rules through both paid and unpaid leave, and the practical mechanics — KIT days, repayment conditions, holidays, pay awards — that determine what the scheme is actually worth to you. Every figure here is sourced from the Burgundy Book itself, gov.uk, Teachers' Pensions or the scheme regulations on legislation.gov.uk, and where sources genuinely disagree or fall silent, this page says so rather than smoothing it over.

How teacher maternity pay is actually structured

The occupational scheme lives in Section 5 of the Burgundy Book, formally titled Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales and published by the National Employers' Organisation for School Teachers alongside the five teacher organisations. The current edition was published in June 2023. Section 5 applies, in its own words, "to all pregnant women, trans men, and non-binary teachers, regardless of the number of hours worked per week" — so part-time teachers are covered on the same terms, with pay pro-rated to their contract rather than their entitlement being cut short.

Paragraph 8.3 sets out the pay bands. What makes them confusing at first read is that almost every band is defined as being offset against statutory maternity pay rather than paid on top of it. SMP is not a bonus sitting above your occupational pay; it is the funding underneath it, and the school tops up the difference.

The band that surprises people is weeks 5 and 6. Because SMP's first six weeks are paid at 90% of your average weekly earnings with no cap, and the Burgundy Book's entitlement for weeks 5 and 6 is 9/10ths of salary, the two figures land in essentially the same place. Those two weeks are an entitlement rather than a top-up, which matters if you are trying to work out where your employer's money is actually going.

The genuinely valuable band is weeks 7 to 18. Paragraph 8.3(d) gives half pay "without deductions" apart from the full-pay ceiling, which means the SMP standard rate sits on top of the half-pay figure rather than being swallowed by it — a materially better deal than the offset arrangement in weeks 1 to 6. For most classroom teachers the combined figure comes to roughly 72% of normal weekly pay, and nowhere near the full-pay cap, so the cap rarely bites.

The two separate eligibility tests

Almost every misunderstanding about teacher maternity pay traces back to a single structural fact: there are two entirely different eligibility tests, run against two different qualifying dates, and you can pass one and fail the other. Neither test is about the other's entitlement, and neither date is the same week.

The 11-week date and the 15-week date are four weeks apart, and that gap catches people out. A teacher who started in September and whose baby is due the following autumn can quite easily clear the 26-week SMP test comfortably while missing the one-year occupational test by a matter of weeks — receiving SMP for 39 weeks and nothing else. If you are anywhere near that boundary, work out both dates on a calendar before you finalise when your leave starts, because the difference between passing and failing the occupational test is worth several thousand pounds.

Two details soften the one-year test in ways teachers routinely miss. First, it is continuous service "with one or more" local authority, not with your current school — so a move between LA-maintained schools does not reset the clock. Second, Section 2 of the Burgundy Book states that a qualifying period of continuous employment "shall not be broken by periods of approved leave of absence, whether it be with or without pay", and that a period of school closure would not normally constitute a break. An unpaid career break or a previous maternity leave should not, on the face of the national agreement, wipe out your accumulated continuous service.

Separately from pay, the leave entitlement itself is unconditional. Paragraph 4.1 gives all teachers, irrespective of length of service, the right to remain absent for up to 52 weeks. You cannot start earlier than 11 weeks before the expected week of childbirth, and you cannot return earlier than two weeks after the birth. Leave is triggered automatically if you are absent wholly or partly because of pregnancy or childbirth after the beginning of the fourth week before the EWC, or if the baby arrives before your chosen start date.

What happens after week 39

Week 39 is where the money stops and the leave does not. Both the Burgundy Book scheme and statutory maternity pay run out at the same point — SMP is a 39-week payment, and the occupational bands (4 + 2 + 12 + 21) also total 39 — while the leave entitlement continues to 52 weeks. Paragraph 8.3(f) is blunt about the remainder: "No pay for any remaining period of absence up to the date of return notified by the teacher."

Those final 13 weeks are a real decision rather than a formality, and they are the single biggest lever most teachers have over the overall cost of their leave. Three things change at week 40. You stop receiving any income from the school. You stop accruing pension, for reasons covered in detail below. And, per the Teachers' Pensions family leave factsheet, if neither contractual nor statutory pay is in payment you are "deemed as being 'out of service'", which means you would not be entitled to death-in-service benefits during that window.

That last point is easy to miss and worth thinking about deliberately rather than by default. It does not make the unpaid weeks a bad idea — for most families the time matters more than the money — but it is a genuine change in your cover, not merely a pause in pay, and it is the kind of thing worth mentioning to a partner or to whoever else depends on your income.

It is also worth being clear that the 13 unpaid weeks are optional. Nothing obliges you to take the full 52 weeks; you can notify a return at any point, subject to the 21 days' written notice paragraph 7.1 requires if you are coming back before the 52 weeks expire. Where notice is not given, the employer can postpone your return by up to 21 days, which is a reason to put the date in writing rather than rely on a conversation.

Does your teachers' pension keep building up?

This is the question that drives most of the forum traffic on the subject, and the answer is better than most teachers expect — but it is better for a reason that is not obvious from your payslip, which is exactly why the confusion persists.

The starting point is what counts as pensionable pay. Regulation 34 of the Teachers' Pension Scheme Regulations 2014 includes within a school teacher's pensionable earnings "any salary or statutory pay paid while P is on sick leave, carer's leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, parental leave shared parental leave, parental bereavement leave, neonatal care leave, or adoption leave". So SMP itself is pensionable pay. That alone would mean you accrue on the reduced amount you actually receive, which is what most teachers assume is happening.

It is not what happens. Regulation 33 defines "notional pensionable earnings" as the amount by which a member's pensionable earnings are reduced during, among other things, a period of maternity leave other than a period of non-pensionable family leave. Regulation 39, headed "Pensionable earnings for the purpose of accruing benefits", then says that for the purpose of calculating your amount of earned pension, if your pensionable earnings are reduced during maternity leave, "P's pensionable earnings for that period include P's notional pensionable earnings."

Read the two together and the mechanism is clear: the reduction is added back for accrual purposes. You earn 1/57th of your normal pensionable salary for the period, not 1/57th of what you were actually paid. Teachers' Pensions puts the same point in plain language in its employer toolkit, noting that a member on maternity leave "will continue to accrue pension based on the usual pay rather than the actual pay received whilst on pensionable maternity leave."

Contributions work the other way round, and this is where the arrangement becomes genuinely favourable. Your contribution rate is determined by the tier your normal salary falls into — Teachers' Pensions' employer guidance says the member's contribution rate is based on what they would have earned if they weren't on family leave — but that percentage is applied to the reduced pay you are actually receiving. The 2021 family leave factsheet states it directly: where pensionable earnings are reduced during maternity leave, "the contributions you pay will be deducted from the actual reduced salary you receive but using the contribution rate that would ordinarily apply to you."

The net effect is that you pay materially less into the scheme during maternity leave while earning exactly the same pension you would have earned by working. For a teacher on a mid-scale salary that difference runs to roughly £1,500 across the paid portion of a year's leave, quantified in the worked example below. It is one of the few genuinely generous mechanics in the scheme, and it is almost never explained anywhere a teacher would naturally look.

What unpaid leave actually costs your pension

Weeks 40 to 52 fail the test above on both limbs — no statutory pay, no salary — so they are non-pensionable family leave. The Teachers' Pensions member guidance is unambiguous: "If you're not receiving any pay however, it means you're no longer in pensionable employment for the purposes of the Scheme." Nothing accrues, and the period shows on your record as days excluded.

The cost is smaller than most people fear and larger than most people expect, which is an awkward combination to plan around, so it is worth putting a number on it. Thirteen unpaid weeks is a quarter of a scheme year. At the career average accrual rate of 1/57th, a teacher on £46,940 gives up £46,940 × (13/52) ÷ 57 — about £206 a year of annual pension, payable for life from retirement and revalued each year in the meantime. That is the whole of the direct effect: a permanent but modest reduction to one year's slice of your career average pot, not a break in your membership or a loss of anything you have already built.

Two things soften it further. The reduction applies only to the year in question and does not touch accrual before or after. And because the career average scheme revalues each year's accrual independently, an unpaid quarter-year early in a career is not disproportionately damaging in the way a final-salary gap could be. You can model your own figure with our Teachers' Pension Calculator.

Whether you can buy the lost period back is the one question this guide cannot answer with confidence, and it is flagged honestly in the FAQs below. Teachers' Pensions publishes three flexibilities — Additional Pension in multiples of £250 a year, Faster Accrual at 1/45th, 1/50th or 1/55th, and Buy Out, which must be elected within six months of first entering the career average scheme — but its published flexibilities guidance does not describe a dedicated route for buying back unpaid family leave in the way some other public service schemes do. If the answer would change your plans, ask Teachers' Pensions directly and in writing.

Keeping in Touch (KIT) days

KIT days let you work during maternity leave without ending it and without losing that week's SMP. The allowance is 10 days during maternity or adoption leave, with a separate allowance of 20 SPLIT days — shared parental leave in touch days — if you move onto shared parental leave later. The two allowances are additional to each other rather than alternatives.

For teachers the obvious uses are an INSET day, a departmental planning session before a new term, a results day, or a transition or handover meeting with whoever is covering your classes. They are also, in practice, the main way a teacher stays connected to a school that has changed considerably in a year away.

• They are voluntary on both sides. Your school cannot require you to work a KIT day and you cannot require your school to offer one. Both parties have to agree, and agreeing to one does not commit you to any more.
• Part of a day burns a whole day. Attending a two-hour department meeting uses one of your ten, exactly as a full teaching day would. There is no half-day accounting.
• Pay is negotiable, not statutory. There is no fixed KIT rate in law. Agree what you will be paid before the day, in writing, rather than discovering the answer on your next payslip.
• Your employer may offset KIT pay against that week's SMP. This is the detail that catches people out: a KIT day does not automatically mean extra money on top of your maternity pay. You must, however, receive at least the National Minimum Wage for the hours actually worked, disregarding the SMP element.
• Going over 10 days is expensive. Work an eleventh day and you lose that entire week's SMP, even if the extra work was a single afternoon. Any contractual pay agreed for the day is still owed to you, but the statutory payment for the week is gone.
• They are pensionable. Teachers' Pensions confirms that KIT days fall within the same half-pay-or-statutory-pay threshold that governs the rest of family leave, so a KIT day worked during a pensionable period does not disrupt your accrual.

The practical advice from this is narrow but worth following: treat KIT days as a scheduling and relationship tool rather than an income tool, and get the pay arrangement confirmed by email before you turn up. The offset rule means a school acting entirely within its rights can pay you for a KIT day and leave your total for that week unchanged, which is a genuinely unpleasant surprise if nobody explained it in advance.

What happens if you don't return to work

The occupational element of the Burgundy Book scheme is conditional. Paragraph 8.2 makes payment of enhanced maternity pay conditional on the teacher "being available, or able, to return to work for the required period", and paragraph 5.1 sets that period at returning to your job for at least 13 weeks, explicitly including periods of school closure. Paragraph 5.2 allows, with employer agreement, a full-time teacher to return part-time for a period equating to 13 weeks of full-time service — a flexibility worth knowing about if a phased return is what you actually want.

If you do not satisfy the condition, paragraph 8.4 applies: "the teacher shall refund such sum after the first six weeks' payment as the employer at their discretion may decide. Payments made by way of SMP are not refundable."

Two points in that sentence do a lot of work. The first six weeks are protected, so the full-pay and nine-tenths bands are not in play. And the amount repayable is set by employer discretion rather than being an automatic clawback of everything — the national agreement gives the employer a decision to make, not a formula to apply. That is a genuine negotiating position if your circumstances have changed for reasons outside your control, and it is worth asking your employer, in writing and before you resign, exactly what sum they would seek and on what basis. Your union rep is the right person to help with that conversation.

The SMP protection is absolute and matters a lot. In the worked example below, of roughly £17,064 received across the year, over £11,000 is SMP and can never be reclaimed. The genuinely at-risk amount is the half-pay occupational top-up across weeks 7 to 18 — around £5,416 for a teacher on £46,940 — which is the real financial stake in the decision to return.

One related consequence sits on the pension side. Teachers' Pensions' FAQs note that where a member does not return, pensionable employment is treated as having stopped at the end of statutory maternity pay, and the member becomes a deferred member of the scheme from that point.

A full worked example

Figures below use £46,940 — the confirmed M6 National point on our 2026/27 pay scales page. Academy trusts are not bound by the STPCD, so check your own school's pay policy for your exact figure. Weekly pay is taken as annual salary divided by 52 (£902.69), and SMP at the 2026/27 standard rate of £194.32. The teacher has more than one year's continuous service, takes the full 52 weeks, and returns to work.

That is roughly 36% of a full year's salary. Of the total, about £11,287 is SMP — six weeks at 90% of average weekly earnings (£812.42) plus 33 weeks at £194.32 — leaving around £5,777 as the school's genuine occupational contribution. Almost all of that occupational element, £5,416 of it, comes from the twelve half-pay weeks, which is precisely why weeks 7 to 18 are the part of the scheme worth understanding properly.

Now the pension side, which is where the arithmetic turns in your favour. Thirty-nine of the 52 weeks are pensionable. Accrual is calculated on notional pensionable earnings — the full £46,940 rate — so the pension earned is £46,940 × (39/52) ÷ 57, or about £618 of annual pension, against the £824 a full worked year would have produced. The 13 unpaid weeks account for the roughly £206 difference.

Contributions tell the opposite story. A salary of £46,940 sits in the 8.9% member contribution tier, and that rate is applied to actual pay received. Across the paid weeks the teacher contributes about 8.9% of £17,064 — roughly £1,519. Had she worked those same 39 weeks on full pay, she would have contributed 8.9% of £35,205, or about £3,133. She therefore pays around £1,615 less into the scheme while accruing exactly the same £618 of pension she would have earned by working every one of those weeks.

A caveat on all of the above: these are gross figures. Occupational maternity pay and SMP are both ordinary taxable income subject to PAYE and National Insurance, so your take-home will be lower than the table — though the tax position also improves as your income falls through the year, and a teacher who spends several months on SMP alone often ends up owed a refund through the PAYE system. Model your net position with our take-home pay calculator.

The Annual Allowance and other tax points

The Annual Allowance limits how much pension growth can be built up tax-free in a tax year. It has stood at £60,000 since 2023/24, and for defined benefit schemes like the Teachers' Pension Scheme the amount tested is not your contributions but your pension input amount: HMRC's standard method values the year's growth in your accrued annual pension at a factor of 16, after indexing the opening value by CPI.

For the overwhelming majority of teachers this is simply not a live issue during maternity leave, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than implying a problem that does not exist. Maternity leave reduces pension growth relative to a full working year, so if anything it moves you further from the allowance. The teacher in the worked example above adds roughly £618 of annual pension in the year — a pension input amount in the region of £9,900 before indexation adjustments, comfortably inside a £60,000 allowance.

There are two narrow situations where it becomes relevant, both on the way back rather than on the way out. The first is the year you return: if your return coincides with a substantial promotion, a large backdated pay award, or a move into leadership, the step change in pensionable pay can produce an unusually large input amount in a single year. Unused allowance from the three previous tax years can normally be carried forward, and a year of maternity leave with reduced accrual is exactly the kind of year that generates carry-forward headroom.

The second concerns the tapered Annual Allowance, which reduces the £60,000 for very high earners — it bites only where threshold income exceeds £200,000 and adjusted income exceeds £260,000, thresholds far above any classroom teaching salary and above most school leadership pay. If you are close to them for reasons outside teaching, a year of reduced income from maternity leave can itself take you out of the taper, which is worth modelling rather than assuming. Our pension calculator and Annual Allowance tools can help, but at that level of income the right answer is a regulated adviser.

Paternity, shared parental and adoption leave

Maternity is the main focus of this guide, but teachers ask about the other three constantly, and the Burgundy Book's treatment of them is thinner than its maternity scheme — which is itself the most useful thing to know.

Paternity leave

There is no paternity scheme in the Burgundy Book. Section 5 covers maternity only, so a teacher taking paternity leave is on the statutory entitlement plus whatever the school or trust's own policy adds — and school policies vary widely here, with some offering enhanced full-pay paternity and others offering nothing above the statutory floor. Ask for the policy in writing.

Statutorily, you can take up to two weeks, either together or as two separate one-week blocks, ending within 52 weeks of the birth. You should tell your employer the due date at least 15 weeks before the baby is due, and give 28 days' notice to change a start date. Statutory Paternity Pay for 2026/27 is £194.32 a week, or 90% of average weekly earnings if lower. From 6 April 2026 paternity leave became a day-one right, removing the previous service qualification, though statutory paternity pay still requires 26 weeks' continuous service. April 2026 also introduced a new Bereaved Partner's Paternity Leave entitlement of up to 52 weeks where a mother or primary adopter dies.

Shared parental leave

Shared parental leave lets parents share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay in the first year, created by the mother curtailing her maternity leave and pay early. Shared Parental Pay is £194.32 a week for 2026/27, or 90% of average weekly earnings if lower. It can be taken in blocks separated by periods of work, which suits the school year unusually well — a parent can, for instance, take a discrete term rather than an arbitrary run of weeks.

The trap is specific to teachers and worth stating clearly: curtailing maternity leave to convert it into shared parental leave converts the occupational Burgundy Book bands into flat-rate statutory pay for the transferred weeks. If you curtail before the half-pay band at weeks 7 to 18 has run its course, you are giving up the most valuable part of the teacher-specific scheme. Run the numbers on both options before curtailing, and be aware that a partner's employer may offer nothing enhanced at all.

Adoption leave

Statutory adoption leave mirrors maternity at 52 weeks, and Statutory Adoption Pay runs for up to 39 weeks — 90% of average weekly earnings for the first six weeks, then £194.32 or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, for the remaining 33.

The occupational position is materially weaker than for maternity, and this is the single most important thing an adopting teacher should know. Paragraph 12.1 of the Burgundy Book says only that "the employer may, at their discretion, extend to adoptive parents the relevant postnatal sections of this scheme." That is a discretion, not an entitlement. Many local authorities and trusts do extend the scheme in full, and the Teachers' Pension Scheme treats adoption leave identically to maternity for accrual purposes — but the enhanced pay is not guaranteed by the national agreement the way maternity pay is. Get your employer's position confirmed in writing early in the matching process rather than assuming parity.

Your step-by-step timeline

The Burgundy Book's notification requirements are specific, and missing one can delay a return or complicate a payment. This is the sequence in the order it actually happens.

Where the figures conflict

Two genuine inconsistencies are worth flagging, because you will hit both if you read around this subject.

The first is the pay bands. A large number of summaries — including reputable union-adjacent pages — describe the Burgundy Book scheme as "weeks 19 to 39: SMP only", which is correct, and others as "21 weeks of SMP", which is also correct, being the same thing counted differently. Where genuine divergence creeps in is the description of weeks 7 to 18: some sources describe them as "half pay" and others as "half pay plus SMP". The Burgundy Book's own paragraph 8.3(d) settles it — half pay "without deductions" except where combined pay and SMP exceed full pay, which means SMP is additive. If your payslip shows the lower figure, that is worth querying.

The second is the pension. Teachers' Pensions' member-facing family leave page states that "your contributions and benefits will be based on the pay you get while you're on leave", which read alone implies reduced accrual. Its own employer toolkit says the opposite for benefits — that a member "will continue to accrue pension based on the usual pay rather than the actual pay received" — and regulation 39 of the 2014 regulations supports the employer toolkit. The member page is best read as describing contributions rather than accrual; the regulations are the authority. If in doubt, it is your annual benefit statement from Teachers' Pensions that shows what was actually credited, and it is worth checking the year after your leave.

Finally, a word on the salary used: the £46,940 M6 point in the worked example is the confirmed STPCD figure for 2026/27 (rest of England), taken from the STRB's 36th Report as accepted by the Government. Wales has its own pay document and its own M6 figure — the pay side of this guide will need the Welsh scale substituted, though the Burgundy Book and pension mechanics described here apply identically in Wales. Individual academy trusts can set their own pay points, so your own figure may differ. Every other number — the Burgundy Book bands and conditions, the £194.32 statutory rate, the £129 lower earnings limit, the 1/57th accrual rate, the 8.9% contribution tier, the £60,000 Annual Allowance, the 10 KIT days and 20 SPLIT days — comes from the Burgundy Book (June 2023 edition), gov.uk, Teachers' Pensions or the Teachers' Pension Scheme Regulations 2014 directly.

Figures use published income tax, National Insurance, student loan and Teachers' Pension Scheme rates for 2026/27, last checked 13 September 2026. Thresholds are set by HM Treasury, HMRC, the Student Loans Company and Teachers' Pensions and can change — always check gov.uk and teacherspensions.co.uk for the current figures before making a financial decision. This tool gives an estimate for guidance only and is not financial, tax or pensions advice.

Maternity and parental rights in particular are a mix of national agreement, statute and your own employer's policy, and the last of those three is the one this page cannot see. Nothing here is a substitute for your contract, your school or trust's written maternity policy, or advice from your union — the NEU and NASUWT both run member advice lines that deal with exactly these questions, and they are the right first call if something on your payslip does not match what you expected.