Pensions
Your school's pension rate fell 4.9 points. Your pension did not.
A 4.9-point average cut in employer pension contributions for school support staff will fund the teachers' 3.5% rise, but their benefits are unchanged.
4.9 points average cut in employer contributions
The teachers’ pay rise is being paid for out of the pension scheme that teaching assistants, caretakers, cleaners and catering staff are in. The rate employers pay into it has fallen by 4.9 percentage points on average; the pension those staff build up each year has not changed at all. That is not a union claim. It is what the Education Secretary’s letter says, and what the scheme’s own rules say.
On 16 September Lucy Powell wrote to the National Education Union setting out how the 3.5% teacher pay award from September 2026 would be met. The 2025 valuation of the Local Government Pension Scheme has cut what employers must pay into it. Schools may now keep that saving rather than have it clawed back, and use it for the teacher award.
What changed
| What moved | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average cut in the employer contribution rate | 4.9 percentage points |
| Range across individual funds | nothing at all, up to 10.2 points |
| Average employer rate, before and after | about 21.5% to about 16.5% of pay |
| What it pays for | the teachers’ 3.5% award from September 2026 |
| Change to what you build up | none |
Those last two rate figures are the scheme advisory board’s rounded averages across every fund in England and Wales. The 4.9 points is what the department expects schools to see. They are two different measurements of the same move, so they are close rather than identical.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies put the effect at about £500 million for schools in England — a permanent increase of just under 1% in funding. GMB, which has more than 100,000 school support staff members, calls it a raid on the lowest paid in education to subsidise better-paid colleagues.
Your pension is not smaller
This is the part worth being exact about, because “raided” makes it sound as though money has been taken out of something of yours. It has not been, and there is no personal pot for it to come out of.
The Local Government Pension Scheme is a defined benefit scheme. Each year you add a year’s worth of pension: 1/49th of your pensionable pay, put into your pension account and revalued in line with the cost of living every April. That fraction is set in regulations. It does not move when the employer’s contribution rate moves. Your own contribution rate does not move either — that is set by what you earn, somewhere between 5.5% and 12.5% of pensionable pay.
The employer rate does a different job. An actuary sets it at each valuation, every three years, at whatever keeps the fund able to pay what it has promised. It came down mainly because actuaries now assume higher future investment returns than they did at the 2022 valuation — not because anyone’s benefits were trimmed.
What is actually at stake
Three things, and your pension build-up is not one of them.
First, 4.9 points is an average. Individual funds range from no reduction at all to 10.2 points. A school whose fund moved by nothing has no saving to spend and still owes the teacher award. Powell’s letter says schools can cover the cost at national level, which is not the same as every school covering it.
Second, the rates are only fixed until 2029. The 2025 valuation sets employer rates from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2029. The next one, as at 31 March 2028, sets them again, and it can move them back up. Schools would then be paying more into the scheme out of budgets that have already spent the saving — and support staff pay sits in the same budget.
Third, this is a decision about whose pay rise gets funded. Support staff pay is not settled here. It is negotiated separately, on the NJC pay spine, which is why GMB is objecting to a saving on its members’ pensions paying for someone else’s award.
If you are on that spine, the 2026/27 award and the spine points show what your own year came to.
Where these figures come from
- Teacher pay award to be funded through pension savings — Tes
- School support staff pensions raided for teachers' wage rise — GMB Union
- Teacher pay to rise 3.5% in 2026, but it's not fully funded — Schools Week
- How your pension is worked out — LGPS members
Every figure traces to a dated document — the line this section is named after. If one here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed publicly. Work out your own figures.