25 July 2022
Correcting how short-term relievers are paid
Teacher employment agreements state that day relievers must be paid for a minimum of two hours per day if they are engaged by a school. The Ministry of Education (Ministry) has identified some short-term relievers are currently not being paid a minimum of two hours.
Currently the payroll system allows schools to submit timesheets of less than two hours. When a timesheet is received for less than two hours (in one or more bookings), the short-term reliever should receive pay for two hours. As this does not currently happen, some short-term relievers are being underpaid.
The Ministry is working with Education Payroll Limited (EPL) to implement automatic top-up payments to short-term relievers who did not receive their correct pay. These payments will start appearing in pay period 11 under the payroll code “DDRUP” and will apply to all timesheets submitted after the pay period 10 cut off.
This automated process will run at the end of the pay period and will enter a top-up payment where a short-term reliever is identified as being booked for less than two hours, per school, per day. This will be funded through the original relief booking allocation. If this is from teachers’ salaries, then this will generate banking staffing usage.
Please note that as this top-up payment does not count as service, as it does not reflect hours worked..
The Ministry is still looking into the historical impact of this error and will communicate further on this once investigations are completed.
If you have any further questions about this please contact the Ministry of Education on MW.Mailbox@education.govt.nz