
Shockingly bad adding up…
This is an appallingly bad presentation of figures sent to a teacher – I have “mentioned” this to the TPS and the teacher is making their own complaint…along with two others that have also contacted me with the same problem.
They have been given two “totals” but the totals come from two different time periods, 3 years apart.
The totals given to them make it look as though one of the options will pay £1800 more than the other, but when the pensions are valued to the same date the difference is only £1000. As there is also a significant gap in the lump sums someone could easily have made a different choice based on the figures as presented.
At no point in time would the pension total given in this example for Option 2 ever had been paid…it is just complete and utter nonsense!
My message to the TPS Administration
Here is what looks like a MAJOR systemic problem with RSS’s being provided to teachers who took their final salary pension WITHOUT taking their career average one and who are now applying for the career average. Please do pass on my concerns about this, I have now seen 3 of these and have asked the members to make their own complaints to you. However, given that this no longer appears to be an isolated case I am posting this here.
The problem:
1) The final salary pension is given the value it would have had at the time it was taken, in the example here (posted with the permission of the owner), that is to 1 March 2022.
2) The career average pension is given a value to a different date. In this example to 18 May 2025.
3) These two values are then added together to give the “Total Annual Pension” which is a nonsense.
The final salary row is valued to 2022 and the career average to 2025. To get a comparable total they must BOTH be valued to the SAME DATE.
For reference I have overlaid the image of their RSS with those calculations using the PI factors published for such by the Government.

The consequences:
The RSS as provided suggests that there is a difference of £1,833.60 in the annual pensions between options 1 and 2. The reality is that the difference is £1,051.42.
A reduction in the difference of well over 40%.
The production of these figures for those in the situation I describe MUST be halted immediately and anyone who has been sent such figures and made their choices based on such misleading numbers must be contacted, provided with comparable figures set in the same time frame and be permitted to change their choice if it has already been made.