Teachers’ Pension – Deferred vs Active Growth

What happens if you leave, stop paying in, or defer your CARE pension?

Plan your Teachers’ Pension

Stop guessing. Use our tools to project your income, calculate tax-free cash, and understand your options.

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What this page shows

  • Deferred: you stop paying in now. Your pension then only rises with inflation (prices).
  • Active: you keep paying in. It rises with inflation plus a small extra, and you earn a new bit each year from your pay.

Two ways to compare

  • Paste a final figure from the CARE Impact calculator, or
  • Estimate from salary: enter your full-time salary and the % you work (e.g. 60% if you’re 3 days a week).

Example: On £40,000 full-time at 60%, your pensionable pay is £24,000. Rough new pension earned this year ≈ £24,000 ÷ 57 ≈ £421, which then grows each year.

Not sure of your full-time salary? See the 2025–26 pay scales.

Paste the “Career Average at retirement” from the CARE Impact tool, or estimate here with FTE & %FTE.
From CARE Impact calculator.
Default 2.0
Default 1.6 (CPI + 1.6%)
What should you check next?

Whether you stay active or defer affects your total retirement income. You may want to see how this CARE outcome combines with your full Teachers’ Pension or explore alternatives like early or phased retirement.

Project full Teachers’ Pension Check early retirement impact

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How your CARE grows each year

  • While you keep paying in: your built-up CARE goes up by inflation (CPI) plus an extra 1.6%.
  • If you leave / stop paying: it goes up by inflation (CPI) only.

Example: If CPI is 2%, then active growth is 3.6% a year, and deferred growth is 2.0% a year.

Frequently Asked Questions

Your pension usually becomes deferred. You stop building new CARE pension, and your existing CARE pot revalues each April by CPI (prices). Final Salary benefits are preserved until you claim them. You can re-join later if eligible, and any new CARE you build will be in a fresh “active” pot.

“Deferred” means you’re no longer an active member paying contributions. Your accrued benefits are preserved and increase with CPI revaluation each year until you take them. No new CARE accrual is added while deferred.

Both deferred and active CARE are increased annually by CPI, but active usually gets an extra uplift (CPI + a fixed top-up set by TPS rules), and you also earn a new 1/57th of pension each year on your pensionable earnings.

Yes, if you return to eligible employment you typically rejoin as active. Your previous deferred pot stays deferred (still CPI-revalued), and you start building a new active CARE pot with CPI + top-up and fresh 1/57th accrual.

You can normally claim from your Normal Pension Age for each section (Final Salary 60/65, CARE linked to State Pension Age). You can often take it earlier with an actuarial reduction, subject to minimum pension age rules (rising to 57 on 6 April 2028).