Following a recent claim brought against the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, the Department for Education (DfE) has accepted that there is direct sexual orientation discrimination within the Teachers’ Pension Scheme regulations, where male survivors of opposite-sex marriages and civil partnerships are treated less favourably than survivors in same-sex marriages and civil partnerships.

The Department is considering precisely what changes are necessary to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme to remove the discrimination, but regulatory changes will be introduced to provide that:

• the male spouse or civil partner of a female member is treated in the same way as a same-sex spouse or civil partner (survivor benefits are in relation to service from 1 April 1972, or 6 April 1978 if the marriage was after the last day of pensionable service); and
• the change will apply from the date that same-sex civil partnerships were implemented (5 December 2005).

We’ll work in conjunction with the DfE to implement this change to the Scheme and provide further details on our approach and timescales in due course.