Teachers pension - early retirement v phased retirement v part time

sean1969

I am looking at options from September 2026 when I will be 57.

I have three options as stated in the title

1. Early retirement 
2. Phased retirement
3. Working part time ( reducing my hours)

I am a Headteacher in a primary school. Ideally I would retire on 31 08 26 but that would result in a significant reduction in my pension as I am in both the final salary (28 years) and career average (4 ish years) schemes. One option is phased retirement as I feel, if governors agreed to a co-headship, that I could do another couple of years at 3 days a week. However, I do not really want to access any of my pension benefits - pension or lump sum at this time. The other option would be just to request to move part time, again three days a week, although I’m not sure if this is allowed. This would also result in a co-headship if governors allowed this. I have a deputy head who I have spoken to and would be happy to work as a co-head for 2 days and a head for 3. 

I was seeking any advice in terms of pros and cons of the two part time alternatives. 

stuart746

I am in a similar situation with the same scheme and have modelled the different options. However, there is no one size fits all. I do recommend you look at David Fountain's website and YT videos on this as they are very clear and present many possible scenarios. If you take phased retirement you do have to take a mimimum of a 20% reduction and you can take up to 75% of the benefits of the either or both FS and CA schemes (including lump sum of the FS scheme). Final salary calculations are also made at the point you take the benefit (as opposed to accruing with salary increased. My understanding (happy to be corrected) is that if you do take phased retirement you must take some of the benefits. However, if you are not seeking to take any benefit from the scheme then it makes more sense to either early retire (without taking scheme benefits) or work part-time if you are allowed to do so by the governors - it seems a long shot for a headship but then I do not know enough about your specific context. However, there are so many factors that may be relevant I do suggest more specific research into the TPS scheme.