Teachers’ Pensions Scheme: End of Year Certificate consolidation

Why is this costing you more money? 

When submitting separate EOYCs, these are separate engagements for your auditor. This means additional EOYCs to check, additional employees to sample, additional reports to draft and file. More work, and therefore more fees. 

What could you save? 

The larger the Trust the greater the economies of scale. A two school Trust however could still likely be saving approximately £1,000* of compliance fees from submitting one certificate rather than two. For a six school Trust this could increase to approximately £4,500* of savings.

(*Figures are estimated based on average Price Bailey fees. Your auditor may have a different pricing structure.) 

Are there any non-financial benefits? 

Time, arguably is your most precious resource. Submitting one certificate rather than multiple is going to be far less time consuming for your finance staff. Additionally, the sample sizes chosen by the auditor – for which you will need to download member prints, possibly payslips and potentially answer questions – will in total be lower. For every EOYC the auditor reviews, a minimum sample size of 20 teachers (or the total number of teachers if less than this) must be picked. This sample remains at 20 up to a total of 400 teachers before it starts increasing up to a cap of 60. Therefore, in the example of a six school MAT submitting individual returns, you could have to provide data for up to 120 teachers.

It’s nearly 31 March, can you switch to a consolidated return for 2025/26 now? 

Our Academies team at Price Bailey contacted Teachers’ Pensions who have advised that this wouldn’t be possible. To make the change, all individual payments to Teachers’ Pensions would have to be reversed and then re-applied to the MAT record. The administration burden of this would be too high.

When should you be thinking about making a change to a consolidated return for 2026/27? 

Teachers’ Pensions advise that if you wish to move to a MAT return from 2026/27 you submit a “MAT return” with effect from April 2026 contributions. You would need to contact TP to advise you wish to submit as a Trust. Making the switch at the start of the year takes far less time than mid way though.

Is there anything else you should know? 

The administration of the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme is transitioning from Capita to Tata Consulting Services in the summer of 2026. Whilst this will have no impact on scheme benefits, Teachers’ Pensions can not advise on what the processes may be after this transfer. Therefore, it is imperative to take action now to make this change. 

Does it matter if you are on MCR or not? 

There are currently two ways to submit your monthly contributions data to Teachers’ Pensions:  

• Monthly Data Collection (MDC) which requires you to submit an MDC file, contributions payment and the Monthly Contributions Breakdown form on or before the 7th of the month. The process will remain the same.  

• Monthly Contributions Reconciliation (MCR), this has replaced MDC enabling reconciliation down to a member level. This process requires your submission of an MCR file and contributions payment, on or before the 15th of the month. 

MCR helps ensure the data you are submitting is accurate, if Teachers’ Pensions notice any discrepancies in the contributions deducted they will provide you with an error warning. It does not matter if you are not yet using MCR, the process for switching to a consolidated return is the same.