Teachers' Pensions: Scotland (STPS) vs England & Wales (TPS)
Scotland runs its own teachers' pension scheme, administered by SPPA — not the England & Wales TPS. The contribution tiers, employer rates and McCloud legislation compared, plus what actually happens to your pension when you move across the border.
Independent guidance, not affiliated with the DfE, Teachers' Pensions or any teaching union.
Short answer
Two schemes, not one — and this isn't a devolution quirk
A great deal of UK-wide teaching content, including a fair amount of otherwise careful pension guidance, treats "the Teachers' Pension Scheme" as a single national institution that every teacher in the United Kingdom belongs to. It isn't, and the assumption is unusually persistent because so much else about teaching does read across: the job title, the broad career shape, the professional expectations, even the general design of the pension itself. But there are three separate teacher pension schemes in the UK, not one, and they are legally distinct arrangements rather than regional administrations of a shared scheme.
England and Wales share the Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS), made under regulations laid by the Department for Education and administered by Teachers' Pensions. Scotland has the Scottish Teachers' Pension Scheme (STPS 2015), made under regulations laid by Scottish Ministers and administered by the Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA). Northern Ireland has the Northern Ireland Teachers' Pension Scheme (NITPS), administered by the Department of Education NI. This guide focuses on the first two, because the England-to-Scotland move is by far the most common cross-border move in UK teaching and the one with the largest practical consequences.
The most useful thing to understand up front is that Scotland's separate scheme is not a product of devolution at all. Distinct Scottish teacher superannuation regulations go back to 1992 and were consolidated in 2005, and the underlying separation of Scottish education administration long predates even that. The Scottish Parliament, re-established in 1999, inherited an already-separate arrangement rather than creating one. This matters because it changes how you should think about the relationship: Scotland did not branch off from an England & Wales scheme, so there is no reason to expect the two to track each other, and in practice they increasingly don't.
The practical tell: who writes to you
1992
When separate Scottish teacher superannuation regulations were first made — seven years before devolution
What's genuinely the same — and it's most of the design
It would be misleading to present these as radically different pensions, because in structural terms they are remarkably similar, and that similarity is real rather than superficial. Both schemes were reformed on the same timetable following the Hutton review and the Public Service Pensions Act 2013, and both landed on essentially the same design. If you understand how one works, you understand how the other works.
| Feature | STPS (Scotland) | TPS (England & Wales) |
|---|---|---|
| Scheme type | Career average revalued earnings (CARE) | Career average revalued earnings (CARE) |
| Accrual rate | 1/57th of each year's pensionable pay | 1/57th of each year's pensionable pay |
| In-service revaluation | CPI + 1.6 percentage points | CPI + 1.6 percentage points |
| Deferred revaluation | Broadly CPI alone | Broadly CPI alone |
| Normal Pension Age | Linked to State Pension Age | Linked to State Pension Age |
| Automatic lump sum | None — commutation by choice at retirement | None — commutation by choice at retirement |
| Funding basis | Unfunded, government-backed | Unfunded, government-backed |
| Tax relief mechanism | Net pay arrangement — relief at your marginal rate, automatically | Net pay arrangement — relief at your marginal rate, automatically |
| McCloud remedy applies | Yes, 2015–2022 remedy period | Yes, 2015–2022 remedy period |
| Public Sector Transfer Club member | Yes | Yes |
That shared design is genuinely good news for a teacher moving between the two. It means a Scottish teacher reading our CARE scheme explainer is not reading about a foreign system — the accrual mechanic, the September revaluation, the way a mid-career pay rise permanently improves your pot without retroactively improving earlier years, the absence of an automatic lump sum, the actuarial reduction for taking benefits early: all of that works the same way north of the border. It also means the two schemes sit comfortably together in the Public Sector Transfer Club, because there is a sensible basis for translating service from one to the other.
What it does not mean is that the numbers transfer. Everything above is about scheme architecture. Everything below is about money, and the money is set separately in each nation, by different people, on different timetables.
Contribution tiers compared: the same shape, different money
Both schemes charge members a tiered contribution rate based on annual pensionable pay, and both use six tiers. That is where the similarity ends. Scotland's tier boundaries are set by Scottish Ministers through an SPPA circular; the England & Wales boundaries are set by the DfE through its own process. Neither is derived from the other, and over successive annual uprating decisions they have drifted apart considerably.
Scotland — STPS member contributions, 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027
| Tier | Actual pensionable pay | Member contribution rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Up to £36,195 | 7.35% |
| 2 | £36,196 – £48,724 | 8.88% |
| 3 | £48,725 – £57,775 | 9.90% |
| 4 | £57,776 – £67,975 | 10.61% |
| 5 | £67,976 – £92,693 | 11.73% |
| 6 | £92,694 and above | 12.14% |
England & Wales — TPS member contributions, from 1 April 2026
| Tier | Annual salary band | Member contribution rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Up to £36,198.99 | 7.4% |
| 2 | £36,199.00 – £48,727.99 | 8.9% |
| 3 | £48,728.00 – £57,776.99 | 9.9% |
| 4 | £57,777.00 – £76,572.99 | 10.5% |
| 5 | £76,573.00 – £104,413.99 | 11.6% |
| 6 | £104,414.00 and above | 12% |
Read those two tables side by side and a clear pattern emerges. Through the first three tiers — which covers the great majority of classroom teachers in both nations — the schemes are almost indistinguishable. The boundaries sit within a few pounds of each other and the rates differ by five hundredths of a percentage point or less. A main-scale teacher crossing the border would notice essentially nothing on their payslip from the pension line.
From tier 4 upward the tables come apart, and the reason is that Scotland's upper bands are much narrower. England & Wales run a single band from £57,777 all the way to £76,572.99. Scotland splits roughly that same stretch of salary across two bands, with tier 4 ending at £67,975 and tier 5 beginning immediately above. The effect is that a Scottish teacher reaches each successive contribution rate at a lower salary than an English one.
Worked comparison: a Principal Teacher on £70,000
Both schemes use a banded rather than marginal structure, which is worth restating because it is the source of most "why did my pension contribution jump more than my pay rise?" questions in both nations. Your entire salary is charged at the rate for the band it falls into, not just the slice above each threshold. A pay rise or promoted-post uplift that carries you a few pounds over a boundary increases the rate applied to all of your pay. Because Scotland has an extra boundary in the range where promoted posts sit, Scottish teachers encounter this cliff-edge more often across a career than English ones do.
Employer contributions, and a divergence coming in April 2027
The employer contribution never appears on your payslip and never affects your take-home pay, but it is real remuneration paid on your behalf and it is set separately in each nation following each scheme's own actuarial valuation. Here the two schemes are about to cross over.
Scotland (STPS) — 26%
Fixed at 26% from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2027, following the Scottish scheme's own valuation. Scotland's next valuation has not yet reported, and no change to the rate from April 2027 has been announced. Do not assume Scotland will follow England & Wales downward — that reduction comes from a separate valuation of a separate scheme.
England & Wales (TPS) — 28.68%, falling to 17.68%
28.68% since 1 April 2024, following the 2020 valuation. Teachers' Pensions confirmed in June 2026 that the 2024 valuation has reported and the rate falls to 17.68% from 1 April 2027 — a substantial reduction, and one that applies to the England & Wales scheme only.
Today, an England & Wales employer pays a higher rate than a Scottish one (28.68% against 26%). From 1 April 2027, on currently announced figures, that reverses sharply: Scotland's 26% against England & Wales' 17.68%. This is the single most commonly mis-stated fact about Scottish teacher pensions right now, because the England & Wales reduction has been widely reported and is easy to assume applies everywhere. It does not. It arises from the England & Wales scheme's own 2024 valuation, and Scotland's equivalent process is on its own timetable.
A lower employer rate doesn't mean a worse pension for you
McCloud applies in both — but through separate Scottish legislation
The McCloud and Sargeant litigation found that the transitional protection offered to older members when public service pension schemes were reformed in 2015 amounted to unlawful age discrimination. Because the discrimination was in the design common to public service schemes generally, the remedy applies across them — including to Scottish teachers.
Scotland did not, however, simply adopt the England & Wales fix. It legislated separately, through the Teachers' Pensions (Remediable Service) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 (SSI 2023/241), with rollback taking effect from 1 October 2023 and the same 2015 to 2022 remedy period used in England and Wales.
The substance is closely aligned with the England & Wales remedy, which is what you would expect given the two schemes' shared design and a common underlying legal problem. Eligible members are "rolled back" into their legacy final-salary scheme for the duration of the remedy period, and then make a choice between legacy and reformed (CARE) benefits for that period — with the choice taken at the point benefits are drawn, rather than immediately, for members still in service. Members who had already retired are given the choice sooner. Both administrations issue remediable service statements setting out the comparison.
What differs is who administers it and on what timetable. A Scottish member's remedy is handled by SPPA under SSI 2023/241 and its associated guidance; an England & Wales member's by Teachers' Pensions under the DfE's regulations. If you have remedy-period service in both nations — which is entirely possible for a teacher who crossed the border during 2015 to 2022 — you have two separate remedies, two separate statements and two separate choices to make, each governed by its own scheme's rules. That is an unusual position but not a rare one, and it is worth flagging to both administrators early rather than assuming either one has the full picture.
Our plain-English McCloud guide and McCloud Remedy Calculator are built on the England & Wales rules. A Scottish member can use them to understand what the remedy is doing and why the choice exists, since the mechanism is the same, but should take their actual figures from SPPA's own remediable service statement.
Moving across the border: the twelve-month trap
This is the most valuable section of this guide, and it covers the thing that is most commonly got wrong, because the wrong assumption is so intuitive. A teacher who moves from a school in Leeds to a school in Glasgow keeps their GTCS-recognised qualification, keeps teaching the same subject, keeps paying into "the teachers' pension", and reasonably concludes that their pension has simply continued. It has not.
You have left one pension scheme and joined another. Your accrued benefits in the scheme you left become deferred benefits — preserved, revalued in line with the Pensions Increase (Review) Order, and payable from your Normal Pension Age, but no longer growing through accrual. Your new scheme starts you from zero. Nothing links the two automatically. No administrator writes to you to point this out, because from each scheme's perspective nothing unusual has happened: one member left, another joined.
Nothing happens unless you apply — and the clock starts on day one
What the Public Sector Transfer Club actually is
The Public Sector Transfer Club is a long-standing reciprocal arrangement between most UK public service pension schemes — the teacher schemes, the NHS schemes, the civil service schemes, local government, the armed forces and others. Its purpose is to stop the public sector penalising people for moving between public sector employers. Rather than converting your benefits to a cash sum and buying whatever that sum happens to purchase in the new scheme at open-market terms, Club terms use a common set of actuarial factors designed to credit you with broadly comparable service in the receiving scheme.
Both the STPS and the TPS are Club schemes. A teacher moving between them is therefore in principle eligible for Club terms — which is genuinely good news, and is why the deadline is worth protecting so carefully.
What happens if you miss the twelve months
Missing the window does not destroy anything. You do not lose pension. But you lose the good option, and you are left choosing between two worse ones:
Non-Club transfer terms
Outside the Club window, a transfer is generally still possible but on ordinary terms: a cash equivalent transfer value is calculated from the old scheme and converted into benefits in the new one at that scheme's standard factors. Because Club terms exist precisely because ordinary factors undervalue a transfer between defined benefit schemes, the service credit you receive is typically materially less than the service you gave up. The gap is real money, and it compounds across the rest of your career.
Two separate deferred pensions
The far more common outcome in practice: nothing is transferred and you simply hold two pensions, one with SPPA and one with Teachers' Pensions. Neither is lost, both are revalued, and both pay out at their own Normal Pension Age. The costs are administrative rather than actuarial — two sets of records to keep track of over decades, two retirement applications, two addresses to keep updated, and the very real risk of losing sight of the smaller one entirely.
It is worth being honest that the second outcome is not a catastrophe, and some teachers deliberately choose it. Deferred benefits in an unfunded government-backed scheme are safe, inflation-protected and will be paid. But it is a worse outcome than a Club transfer for most people who would have qualified for one, and it is almost always arrived at by inaction rather than by decision — which is the part worth fixing.
When leaving two pensions really is the better call
A transfer is not automatically right, and it is worth knowing the cases where it genuinely isn't, so that the decision is a decision:
- You have legacy final-salary service with valuable protections. Pre-2007 or 2007-scheme service carries features — accrual fractions, automatic lump sums, a fixed Normal Pension Age — that may be worth more left where they are than translated into the receiving scheme. This needs a proper look at the quotation rather than a rule of thumb.
- You expect to move back within a few years. If the cross-border move is a fixed-term post or a temporary relocation, transferring twice is usually worse than transferring once at the end, or not at all.
- The Normal Pension Age treatment of the transferred service is unhelpful in your case. How transferred service sits relative to your Normal Pension Age in the receiving scheme can materially change when you can draw it unreduced.
- You are close to retirement. With only a few years left, the administrative simplification of a transfer buys you less, and the transfer value calculation becomes more sensitive to timing.
In every one of those cases the right move is still to request the quotation inside the twelve-month window, then decide. Requesting a transfer quotation does not commit you to anything. Letting the window close does commit you — to not having the option.
12 months
The window to apply for Public Sector Transfer Club terms after joining the new scheme
How to actually handle a cross-border move
If you are moving between an English or Welsh school and a Scottish one, or have done so within the last year, this is the sequence worth following. None of it is difficult; all of it is easy to postpone past the point where it matters.
Write down the date you joined the new scheme
Your twelve-month Club window runs from the date you became an active member of the new scheme, which will normally be your first day in the new pensionable post. Put a reminder in your calendar for nine months later, not eleven — you want time to receive a quotation and think about it, not to discover the deadline as it passes.
Confirm which scheme you are now in, and get both reference numbers
Moving to Scotland means you are now an SPPA member; moving to England or Wales means Teachers' Pensions. Register for the relevant online portal in the new nation and make sure you can still access, or at least contact, the old one. Record both membership reference numbers somewhere you will still find them in twenty years — this is the single highest-value five minutes in the whole process, whether or not you transfer.
Request a transfer quotation from the receiving scheme
Apply to the scheme you have joined, telling them you have benefits in the other teacher scheme and want to explore a Public Sector Transfer Club transfer. They will liaise with the other administrator to obtain the transfer value and produce a quotation showing what service or pension the transfer would buy you. Expect this to take a while — the two administrators have to correspond — which is another reason to start early in the twelve months rather than late.
Check the quotation against what you gave up
The number to focus on is not the cash transfer value but the service or pension credit you would receive in the new scheme, compared with the benefit you currently hold deferred in the old one. Under Club terms these should be broadly comparable. If the quotation looks materially worse than the service you left, check with the administrator whether it has been calculated on Club terms at all — an application that slipped past the window may have been processed as an ordinary transfer without that being obvious from the paperwork.
Decide — and if you don't transfer, keep both addresses current
If you transfer, you end up with one pension, one administrator and one retirement application. If you don't, make sure both SPPA and Teachers' Pensions hold your current address and can find you, and revisit that whenever you move house. Lost deferred pensions are a genuine and very common problem, and the fix is trivially easy while you still remember both schemes exist.
One further point specific to McCloud: if any of your service in either nation falls between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022, tell both administrators, because the remedy interacts with transfers and each scheme's remedy is governed by its own legislation. A transfer of remedy-period service is not impossible, but it is more involved, and it is much better handled deliberately than discovered later.
Which scheme is better? An honest answer
Teachers weighing up a move naturally want a verdict, and the honest answer is that the schemes are close enough in design that the pension should rarely be the deciding factor — but that there are two specific points where it genuinely tilts.
Where England & Wales currently looks better: contribution rates at the upper end. A promoted-post teacher or school leader on £68,000 to £105,000 pays a lower member contribution rate under the TPS than under the STPS, because the England & Wales bands are wider. On £70,000 that difference is roughly £861 a year out of your own pocket. Stacked on top of Scotland's higher income tax rates at the same salary levels, the net-pay gap for a Scottish school leader against an English one on the same gross is meaningful, and it is not always visible when comparing advertised salaries.
Where Scotland currently looks better: the employer contribution from April 2027, on announced figures — 26% against 17.68%. This does not change the benefit you personally receive, since both are defined benefit schemes, but as a measure of the value the employer is putting behind your pension it is a substantial difference and a legitimate thing to note in a total-reward comparison.
For a classroom teacher on the main scale in either nation, though, the contribution difference is a rounding error, the benefit design is effectively identical, and the pension should not drive the decision at all. Pay, working time, class contact and cost of living will all matter far more — and Scotland's Main Grade Teacher maximum sitting well above England's M6 is a much larger factor in the overall financial picture than anything on this page. See our Scotland pay scales guide for that comparison in full.
The thing that should influence your decision, and usually doesn't because nobody mentions it, is the transfer deadline. The pension difference between the two schemes over a career is modest. The difference between a Club transfer and a missed window is not.
How the pay scales interact with all of this
Pension contributions are charged on pensionable pay, and pensionable pay comes from a pay scale — so the two systems interact, and both differ across the border. Scotland's pay is negotiated by the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT) and published in the SNCT Handbook. England's comes from the STPCD following an STRB recommendation; Wales has run its own STPC(W)D since pay was devolved to Welsh Ministers in 2018.
The structural differences matter for your pension in a way that is easy to miss. Scotland has no Upper Pay Range threshold application — a Main Grade Teacher reaches the scale maximum through service alone, in six years — and no TLR system. Additional responsibility in Scotland is paid through promoted posts on their own named scales (Principal Teacher, Lead Teacher, Depute Head, Head Teacher) rather than a TLR layered on top of a classroom salary point. Because those promoted-post scales start well above the classroom maximum, a Scottish teacher taking a promoted post can jump several contribution tiers in one move, where an English teacher taking on a TLR typically edges across a single boundary.
That combination — narrower Scottish contribution bands and larger discrete pay jumps between promoted-post scales — is why the banded cliff-edge effect bites harder in Scotland. If you are weighing up a promoted post in Scotland, model the net figure rather than the gross, because the uplift is simultaneously crossing an income tax band, potentially two pension contribution tiers, and doing so under Scotland's steeper marginal rates. Our take-home pay calculator applies the correct STPS tiers and Scottish tax bands when you select Scotland, so it will show you the real figure rather than an England-shaped approximation.
What this site's tools do and don't cover for Scottish teachers
Summary
Scotland and England & Wales run separate teachers' pension schemes that happen to be built to nearly the same design. The STPS, administered by SPPA, and the TPS, administered by Teachers' Pensions, both accrue at 1/57th, both revalue in service at CPI plus 1.6 percentage points, both link Normal Pension Age to State Pension Age, and both went through the McCloud remedy — Scotland via its own legislation, SSI 2023/241, with rollback from 1 October 2023. The differences are financial rather than structural: Scotland's six contribution tiers run 7.35% to 12.14% with markedly narrower upper bands, against 7.4% to 12% in England and Wales, so promoted-post teachers and school leaders pay noticeably more in Scotland; and the employer rates, currently 26% against 28.68%, are set to cross over in April 2027 when the England & Wales rate falls to 17.68%.
But the point worth acting on, rather than merely knowing, is the transfer. Moving between the two is a scheme transfer and not continuous service, it requires an application from you, and the preferential Public Sector Transfer Club terms generally require that application within twelve months of joining the new scheme. If you have moved across the border in the last year, request a transfer quotation now, before the window closes — asking costs nothing and commits you to nothing, and it is the only step here that becomes impossible if you leave it.
Sources
- SPPA Teachers Circular 2026/03 (3 March 2026), Scottish Public Pensions Agency — the 2026/27 STPS member contribution tiers quoted above
- Pension contribution rates — SPPA, for the 26% STPS employer contribution rate fixed to 31 March 2027
- The Teachers' Pensions (Remediable Service) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 (SSI 2023/241), the Scottish McCloud remedy legislation, with rollback from 1 October 2023
- How your pension works — SPPA, for STPS scheme design, accrual and revaluation
- Rollback — October 2023, Teachers' Pensions, for the England & Wales remedy treatment used in the comparison
- McCloud and Unlawful Discrimination (Scotland) — NASUWT
- England & Wales TPS contribution tiers and employer rate: Teachers' Pensions published member contribution bands from 1 April 2026, and the June 2026 confirmation of the 17.68% employer rate from 1 April 2027 following the 2024 valuation
Figures on this page are for the 2026/27 scheme year and were checked on 17 September 2026. Contribution tiers are reviewed periodically by each scheme's administrator — verify against SPPA (for Scotland) or Teachers' Pensions (for England and Wales) before relying on a figure here for a real financial decision. This is general guidance, not financial or pensions advice.
Frequently asked questions
Are Scottish teachers in the Teachers' Pension Scheme? +
No. Scottish teachers are members of the Scottish Teachers' Pension Scheme (STPS 2015), administered by the Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA) on behalf of Scottish Ministers. The Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS) administered by Teachers' Pensions covers England and Wales only. This is not a recent devolution change and it is not a Scottish branch of a UK scheme — separate Scottish teacher superannuation regulations date back to 1992 and were consolidated in 2005, so the two schemes have been legally distinct for longer than the Scottish Parliament has existed. A Scottish teacher's benefit statement, scheme rules, contribution circular and retirement application all come from SPPA, not Teachers' Pensions.
If I move from an English school to a Scottish one, does my pension just carry on? +
No. Because the STPS and the TPS are separate schemes, moving between them is a scheme transfer, not continuous service. Your existing benefits stay in the scheme you left, as deferred benefits, unless you actively apply to transfer them. There is no automatic linking, and nothing happens simply because your new employer has started deducting contributions. If you want your service treated as one continuous period for pension purposes, you have to apply — and the preferential Public Sector Transfer Club terms generally require an application within twelve months of joining the new scheme.
What is the Public Sector Transfer Club and why does the twelve-month deadline matter? +
The Public Sector Transfer Club is a long-standing arrangement between most UK public service pension schemes that gives preferential terms when a member moves between them, broadly aiming to credit comparable service in the receiving scheme rather than simply converting a cash value at open-market rates. Both the STPS and the TPS are Club schemes, so a teacher moving across the border is in principle eligible. The catch is the deadline: you generally have to apply for the transfer within twelve months of joining the new scheme. Apply inside that window and you get Club terms. Apply outside it and you are offered non-Club terms instead, which are materially worse — a cash equivalent transfer value converted at the receiving scheme's ordinary factors, which typically buys noticeably less pension than the service you gave up. Many teachers who miss the window simply leave both pensions where they are and end up holding two separate deferred pensions.
Is it always better to transfer rather than leave two deferred pensions? +
Not always, and this genuinely needs your own figures rather than a rule of thumb. Club terms are usually favourable, which is why the deadline is worth protecting, but there are real cases where leaving benefits where they are works out better — for instance if you have legacy final-salary service with valuable protections attached, if you expect to move back across the border again within a few years, or if your circumstances mean the receiving scheme's Normal Pension Age treatment of the transferred service is unhelpful. The sensible approach is to request the transfer quotation promptly, inside the twelve-month window, and then decide with actual numbers in front of you. Requesting a quotation does not commit you to transferring, and it preserves the option that the deadline would otherwise remove.
Are the contribution rates actually different, or just the bands? +
Both. Scotland's STPS runs six tiers from 7.35% to 12.14% for 2026/27, with the top tier starting at £92,694. England and Wales run six tiers from 7.4% to 12%, with the top tier starting at £104,414. The band boundaries diverge sharply from the fourth tier upward — Scotland's upper bands are considerably narrower — and five of the six rates differ as well. The practical result is that a Scottish teacher and an English teacher on the same gross salary can pay materially different pension contributions: at £70,000 the Scottish teacher pays 11.73% against the English teacher's 10.5%, a difference of about £861 a year.
Did the McCloud remedy apply in Scotland too? +
Yes, but through separate Scottish legislation rather than the England & Wales regulations. The McCloud and Sargeant litigation found the transitional protection given to older members at the 2015 reform to be unlawful age discrimination across public service schemes generally, so the remedy applies in Scotland as well. Scotland implemented it via the Teachers' Pensions (Remediable Service) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 (SSI 2023/241), with rollback taking effect from 1 October 2023 and the same 2015 to 2022 remedy period. The design is closely aligned with the England & Wales remedy — eligible members are rolled back into their legacy scheme for the remedy period and make a choice between legacy and reformed benefits when they come to take them — but it is Scottish legislation administered by SPPA, so Scottish members should follow SPPA's own remedy guidance and timetable.
Does the employer contribution rate matter to me if it never touches my payslip? +
It does not change your take-home pay, but it is real remuneration and it is worth knowing when you compare posts across the border or against a non-teaching job. The STPS employer rate is 26%, fixed from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2027. The England & Wales TPS rate is 28.68% but is confirmed to fall to 17.68% from 1 April 2027 following the England & Wales 2024 valuation. That reduction is specific to the England & Wales scheme; Scotland's next valuation has not reported and no equivalent change has been announced, so from April 2027 the Scottish employer rate looks set to be higher than the England & Wales one. Note that a lower employer rate does not reduce your own benefits — these are unfunded, government-backed defined benefit schemes, so the promise to you is set by the scheme rules, not by the contribution rate.
I taught in Scotland years ago and now teach in England. Is it too late to do anything? +
The twelve-month Club window will have closed, so preferential Club terms are no longer available for that move. That does not mean the old pension is lost — deferred benefits are preserved and revalued, and SPPA will pay them at your Normal Pension Age whether or not you ever transferred. What you should do is make sure SPPA has your current address and that you know roughly what is sitting there, because the single most common real-world problem with two deferred pensions is not that either is badly calculated, it is that the member loses track of one of them over a thirty-year career. A non-Club transfer may still technically be possible in some circumstances, but it is much less likely to be worth doing.
Do the pay scales differ as well as the pension? +
Yes, and they are set by a completely separate body. Scotland's pay is negotiated by the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers and published in the SNCT Handbook, not the STPCD. The scale structure differs too — a probationer rate plus five numbered Main Grade Teacher points, no Upper Pay Range threshold application, and promoted posts on their own named scales rather than TLRs layered on a classroom salary. This matters for your pension because your pensionable pay is whatever the relevant scale pays you, and the contribution tier that pay falls into is then set by the relevant scheme's table. Two separate systems interacting, not one system with regional variations.
Does this site's take-home pay calculator handle the Scottish scheme? +
Yes. Select Scotland in the nation dropdown on our Teacher Take-Home Pay Calculator and it applies both Scotland's six-band Income Tax system and the correct STPS member contribution tiers, so the net figure is right on both counts. Our dedicated pension projection tools — the Teachers' Pension Calculator, Annual Allowance Calculator and McCloud Remedy Calculator — are still modelled specifically on England & Wales TPS figures, so a Scottish member should treat those as illustrations of how CARE mechanics work rather than as confirmed STPS numbers, and verify against SPPA guidance.
Related guides
Teachers' Pension Scheme 2015 (CARE) Explained
The full CARE mechanics — accrual, revaluation, contribution tiers — which apply in the same way in both schemes.
Scotland Teacher Pay Scales 2026/27 (SNCT)
The SNCT Main Grade Teacher and promoted-post scales, and how they compare with England's STPCD.
Northern Ireland Teacher Pay 2026/27
The third UK system — NITPS, and why NI teachers can't read across from England & Wales TPS figures either.
McCloud Remedy Explained
What the age-discrimination remedy does to your 2015–2022 service, and the choice it creates.
Teacher Take-Home Pay Calculator
Applies the correct pension scheme tiers and income tax bands for all four UK nations.
Should I Leave Teaching? The Financial Side
What happens to accrued teacher pension benefits when you stop contributing — the same deferred-benefit mechanics that apply after a cross-border move.