My wife had 3 years teaching until 2005. From 2005 to 2006 she took up full time study. She returned to full time teaching in September 2006. She was then told that as she had taken the year off to study, she was a 'new entrant'. As a result her pension will change into the future. Can this be challenged
My wife was working as a substitute teacher working mainly in resource and was paying into a pension for every day she worked. This was a requirement. She decided she wanted to retrain in special education and that is the reason she could no longer make herself available for substitute teaching as
she needed to attend college on a full time basis. The course finished in May 2006 and my wife returned that month to work as a substitute teacher. She later got a full time teaching post in September 2006 in a Special School where she still works now.
I'm surprised by this. My understanding is that substitute teachers only started to have pension deductions taken from them in Jan 2005, some time after the OP's wife commenced substitute service and only six months before she went back to college.
Was she a member of the superannuation scheme during this period? On the face of it, I doubt she was. It is in her interests to backdate her membership as far as possible so any contributions deducted will clearly help to fund that.
She really needs to speak with her union. This a minefield.
I'm afraid that I have bad news. If you take a break you are a new entrant. Even if you paid into the pension before this break she is considered a new entrant. They made a change a few years earlier and the same thing happened to everyone who had a break in service that time too. The only way to get around this was to work something like one day a week every month. Unless she did that she is a new entrant.