Finance - Teachers’ Pension Grant

The Education Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) have published confirmation of the new Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) employer contribution rate of 23.6% applicable from 1 September 2019 as well as details of how this will be funded for schools and academies.

Funding for September 2019 to March 2020 is calculated based on the number of pupils aged 2 to 19 multiplied by the applicable rate (see below):

Any schools with less than 100 pupils will have their calculation based on 100 pupils. (Special schools and PRU’s will receive funding on a minimum of 40 pupils).

This funding will be paid through the Local Authority to schools and directly through the ESFA to academies.

For budget setting purposes schools should calculate their funding for 2019-20 based on the rates above and the number of pupils in the previous census (see table below).

To cover any additional actual costs, in excess of 0.05% of the overall budget, schools can make an application for a supplementary grant. Further details on this are not currently available but are expected to be provided by the ESFA in the Autumn. For 2019-20 budget setting purposes, it is suggested that any anticipated supplementary grant is not included.

The rates for future years are expected to change but for budget setting purposes it is suggested that the 2019-20 rate (uplifted for 12 months) is used multiplied by the anticipated future pupil numbers, based on local knowledge, as at the relevant census for each year, to calculate the funding predicted for years 2 and 3.

To help schools with this, there is a calculator (XLSM, 52.4 KB) that can be used for calculating the expected Teachers Pension Grant for 3 years. Funding for years 2 and 3 in the calculator has been based on the Year 1 rate being uplifted from 7 to 12 months.

Kent Schools should assign this funding to I01 (Funds Delegated by the Local Authority) and should be assigned within the Kelsi template in the Other Grants tab.

Schools are advised to use the estimated pupil numbers from the template on the 2019-20 budgets page and enter the calculated funding into the template itself. Both the template and calculator should be printed for the schools records and saved outside of Kelsi (BPS users are advised to use the Document Store).

School BPS users should include this in their Funding Scenario and academies should include this in the Other Income and Expenditure scenario when creating and amending budget forecasts.

Note: the information regarding the Teachers Pension Grant has been updated (based on the ESFA publication of 12 April 2019) since the notification was sent to schools through CRM last week and as such may change further based on potential updates being provided by the ESFA.

More details on all of the above can be found on the Government website and further details from the ESFA are expected to be provided in the Autumn.

Note: all of the above has been based on the available information provided by the ESFA at the time of publication and may be subject to change. Schools' Financial Services take no responsibility for any decisions made as a result of following the above and schools should use their own judgement when calculating their 3 year budget plans.