Schools minister: Reforms will provide sustainable pension for teachers

Schools minister Nick Gibb expresses his support for pension reforms and their ability to provide a fair and sustainable pension for teachers:

"We are determined to provide a fair and sustainable pension for the teaching profession. Pensions are an important part of a teacher's remuneration package and ministers are clear that a defined pension scheme will be maintained along with the pensions they have already earned so none of the rights people have accrued will be affected. And the teachers' pension scheme will remain one of the very best available in the public sector.

"However, people are living longer and this makes pensions more expensive. Lord Hutton made it clear that there needs to be a fairer balance between what employees and taxpayers contribute towards public service pensions. It is right that we ask public sector employees to pay more towards their pension to ensure they are affordable for future generations of teachers.

"But it's vital that new or lower paid teachers are protected from the increases. That's why we are proposing to go beyond the commitment of capping the increase for those earning less than £21,000 and extending that cap up to £26,000. This will mean 117,000 teachers seeing an increase of just 0.6 per cent next April, and a teacher earning £25,000 will pay around an additional £10 per month after tax relief."