Sarah Chen: Author and Maintainer

Background

Sarah Chen taught English in state schools in England for 15 years, working across three different local authorities. Her career spanned roles from early-career classroom teacher through to TLR responsibilities, giving her direct, lived experience of how pay scales, pension contributions and allowances actually appear on a real payslip — not just how they're defined on paper.

During her time in the classroom, she became frustrated with the lack of accurate, transparent pay calculators that understood how the Teachers' Pension Scheme actually worked — particularly the tiered contribution rates based on actual salary rather than full-time equivalent, and the student loan stacking problem affecting career changers with multiple loan plans.

After leaving classroom teaching, Sarah moved into education finance and payroll, where she gained direct experience processing the deductions schools apply to teacher pay each month. That practical payroll background — seeing the calculation from the employer's side, not just the employee's — is what shaped how this calculator was built. She now maintains this site full-time.

What she does on this site

Every calculation formula has been manually verified by Sarah against official sources — NEU, HMRC, Teachers' Pensions, SPPA, and the relevant statutory instruments. Pay scale figures are cross-checked against NEU-published tables each year. The site does not rely on automated data feeds or scraped figures; every update is a manual check against a named primary source.

When a user reports a discrepancy between our results and their payslip, Sarah investigates it personally. Several improvements to this site — including the handling of the Plan 5 student loan threshold and the April 2026 TPS contribution band uplift — came directly from those reports.

Areas of expertise

• UK teacher pay scales (STRB, STPC(W)D, SNCT)
• Teachers' Pension Scheme contribution structure and CARE accrual
• UK payroll deductions: PAYE, National Insurance, student loan repayment
• Part-time and pro-rata teacher pay calculations

Get in touch

If you've found a discrepancy in any calculator on this site, or have a question about how a figure was calculated, contact Sarah directly or read the full methodology behind every calculation.