What's new
Teachers' Pension Employer's Contribution Rate Change - April 2026/27
What's changing
From 1 April 2027, the Teachers' Pension Scheme employer contribution rate will decrease from 28.68% to 17.68% of pensionable pay. This follows the GOV.UK funding adjustment announcement.
To support this change, we've updated Access Education Budgets so schools and academies can apply the new rate in their 2026/27 budget scenarios.
Where to find the update
A notification will appear on the Manage Budgets screen via the Updates Available button, for 2026/27 working scenarios. Clicking through shows the update details, including the data section, publish date, version, and a summary of the rate change.
You have three options:
Action | What happens |
Apply | Updates both new scenarios and your existing 2026/27 working scenarios. The notification is cleared once applied. |
Ignore | Applies the new rate to new scenarios only — your existing 2026/27 scenarios remain unchanged. The notification is cleared once ignored. |
Close | Takes no action. The notification will remain visible so you can apply or ignore it later. |
What updates when you apply
Pay Related Factors screen
The rate will show as 17.68% from the 2026-27 budget year onward, with a tooltip confirming:
28.68% applies until 31 March 2027, and 17.68% applies from 1 April 2027.
If you've manually overridden your pension rate, this update will not change it — you'll need to update the rate yourself if you'd like to apply the new figure.
Teacher staff contracts
Only pensionable Teacher contracts are updated — non-teacher contracts and non-pensionable teacher contracts are unaffected. For each updated contract, the existing 28.68% pension line will be end-dated 31 March 2027, and a new 17.68% line will start 1 April 2027. New teacher contracts created after the update will automatically include both lines.
How this version will be made avalable
This change was released to customers on 24th July 2026.