If you’re employed by an independent school, and after a consultation exercise with you they’ve chosen to leave the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, we want to reassure you about what happens to the benefits you’ve already built up when you’re no longer an active member.

• If you’ve already qualified for the Scheme (i.e. you’ve more than two years’ qualifying service), you’ll become a deferred member and the benefits you’ve built up will count towards your pension when it becomes payable
• You can still qualify for Ill-health pension benefits, but you’ll need to meet specific criteria
• You can transfer your pension to another defined benefits scheme (e.g. final salary, career average) as long as it’s within 12 months of joining that scheme
• If you’ve less than two years’ service counting towards pension benefits you can either transfer the cash equivalent to another pension arrangement or take a repayment of your contributions
• If you think you may move to an employer participating in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, you may want to consider leaving everything where it is and pick up where you left off
• If you return after a break of not more than five years, you’ll benefit by being treated as an active member of the Scheme, as though you hadn’t left.

Read our factsheet (PDF, 54 KB) (This link opens in a new window) to help you understand more about these options. We’d also recommend that you seek independent financial advice to help with your decision making.

Although you’re leaving the Scheme it’s important that you keep up to date with your pension through My Pension Online (MPO).

If you’ve an MPO account (or we have your email address), you’ll receive a leaver pack from us when we receive your last service and salary information from your employer. We’ll also continue to send you information in relation to your deferred member status. In the meantime you may want to look at our Deferred Guide (This link opens in a new window) for more information.

If you don’t have an MPO account we suggest you register for My Pension Online (This link opens in a new window) for one.