Are you an employer in the education sector and want to ensure that you meet your obligations regarding employee pensions?
As an employer, it’s essential to understand the different pension schemes available for teachers, their benefits, and your responsibilities towards them, get it wrong and it could mean hours of correcting or money lost in repayments. As increased schools become Multi Academy Trusts, the risk of duplicating or missing employees is a frequent mistake.
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme is the largest defined benefits pension scheme in the UK, providing retirement, death, and survivor benefits to eligible teachers and their families. There are two types of schemes available: the Final Salary Scheme and the Career Average Scheme.
The Final Salary Scheme is a defined benefits pension scheme that calculates pension benefits based on final salary and the length of pensionable service. This scheme closed to new entrants in April 2015.
The Career Average Scheme is a defined benefits pension scheme that calculates pension benefits based on average salary during pensionable service. If you joined the project after 1 April 2015, you would have entered the Career Average Scheme.
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme provides various benefits, including a lump sum, an index-linked pension, and survivor benefits to eligible dependents. The assistance received depends on multiple factors, such as pensionable service, salary, and retirement age. Currently, an employer will contribute the equivalent of 23.68% of a teacher’s pay towards their pension.
Data Retention Arrangements
As an employer, you must ensure that you enroll eligible employees in the scheme, collect the necessary contributions, and make payments to the system on time. You must also provide information about the pension scheme your company uses for new employees and ensure that they can join the scheme. The software has been developed to securely exchange data about pension scheme members called the Employer Portal.
The Employer Portal
The Employer Portal is a means of securely exchanging data between the pension scheme and the data holders. The data holders with access to the portal include employers and payroll / HR providers. It also equips employers with a facility for online applications from members to be administered to new employees.
Is outsourcing an option?
Outsourcing payroll for education can ensure that Pensions are taken care of by keeping on top of compliance, auto-enrolment, and pension reporting. Dataplan Education has a dedicated pension team to provide the interface between you and the pension scheme, meaning you don’t have to deal with the administration. Service is everything to us and building that client relationship is something we pride ourselves on, so school get their own dedicated team and do not have to face a pool of processors, which we know, can be frustrating. We understand the complexities of pay scales and salary structures, considering ourselves, true education specialists.
If you think outsourcing is the best option for your school then contact one of our advisors today at 03331 128000 or complete our online quote request form.