Teachers’ Pension Scheme: Further Correspondence with the Schools Minister

In our recent correspondence with the Schools Minister, we’re pleased to hear that Local Authorities who employ teachers centrally will receive support throughout the next financial year – April 2024 to March 2025 – for the 5% increase in employers’ contributions to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. We have responded to the Schools Minister to share our continued concerns that the increased TPS employers’ contributions for Music Service Trusts has only been committed until August 2024 and you can read our letter below.

Our correspondence with the Schools Minister is part of an ongoing challenge around the TPS and is only part of our current advocacy for increased funding for the sector.

Dear Minister

 

Thank you for your latest response to our ongoing concern regarding the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) and the ability of many key organisations in the music education sector to continue to provide the TPS.

 

We welcome the news that Local Authorities who employ teachers centrally will receive support throughout the next financial year – April 2024 to March 2025 – for the 5% increase in employers’ contributions to the TPS. This will help Local Authority music services recruit and retain visiting music teachers, which is essential for their role as current Music Education Hub Lead Organisations, and as key delivery partners within the new Music Hubs from September 2024.

 

We are also pleased that the Department for Education (DfE) has found additional funding to support the increased TPS employers’ contributions for the 22 music service trusts that fulfil a similar role. However, we remain concerned that this additional support will only be available until 31 August 2024 and will not be offered in line with the support for Local Authorities which runs until 31 March 2025.

 

We do not understand why full support cannot be given to all those who have committed to providing the TPS to their skilled workforce for the full financial year (April 2024 to March 2025). Without full support, we believe that a significant number of music teachers across the country will be taken out of the TPS due to extreme pressures on music service trust budgets. We expect this to lead to the loss of many staff from a sector that is already concerned about recruitment and retention, with direct consequences for the delivery of the DfE’s National Plan for Music Education.

 

We believe that the relatively modest cost of maintaining support for music service trusts in line with Local Authority support from September 2024 to March 2025 – which we calculate at approximately £1.16m – is an essential investment in the future success of the National Plan. In practical terms, it would mean that TPS contributions would be funded until the end of the current Spending Review period. We would subsequently hope that as part of the next Spending Review our wider concerns of a need for significant increased investment in music education will be confirmed, including provision for maintaining a workforce.

 

It has been suggested to us that music service trusts can choose from a range of other more affordable pensions when support is withdrawn. While it is true that various other pensions options exist, they cannot compete with the terms offered by the TPS as a vital means of recruiting and retaining teachers. Many employers in the sector have already had to cut back on teachers’ terms due to sustained financial pressures, which is why we feel so strongly that TPS, where it is still offered, should be retained. As before we are happy to meet with DfE officials or with you to discuss this most important issue.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Music Mark, MU, ISM