Hi Danielle

The teacher involved might be encouraged further to seek their own advice and guidance eg from their union, who should be expert re all the various provisions and able to discuss with your head teacher etc.

I’m no authority at all on Teachers Pensions specifically but in general think it’s unusual for any employers in a defined benefit scheme except in cases of permanent incapacity to pay up pension entitlements all the way up to date of normal retirement. It’s more usual to permit early retirement with pension worked out as at the date of actual early retirement. It will of course cost the pension scheme more to start paying the pension prematurely and this used to average about 5% reduction in pension payable for life for every complete year of early payment. Normally it would be the pensioner themselves who’d be subject to this reduction but maybe Teachers Pensions allow the employer to offset it with a lump sum payment but as Ray says it’s likely to be a big sum to pay.

PS

what little I do know about Teachers Pensions is that they once were most excellently run but are  now run by private sector subcontractors and any interactions I’ve had with them since then have been dire indeed.