Payroll update 18 February 2026

News for School Payroll Staff

 

Kia ora koutou

We hope your colleagues and students have settled in for a productive term.

Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement (STCA) changes

This collective agreement (CA) includes increases in pay rates and allowances, a new allowance and a change to the part-time rules for Learning Support Coordinators.

Key dates

  • The new collective agreement is effective from 1 December 2025.
  • The corresponding Individual Employment Agreement (IEA) was promulgated on 19 December 2025.
  • Payslips from 3 March 2026 (pay day PP25) will show backdated pay from 28 January 2026 that includes the new pay rates and allowances.
    Date correction: The IEA form shows an incorrect date for backdated pay (31 March 2026). The date for both the CA and IEA is 28 January 2026.

Pay rates

The CA includes an increase for both trained and untrained teachers from 28 January 2026, and a further increase from 28 January 2027.
For the salary scales tables, see Section 4 of the STCA on the Ministry’s website.

Learning Support Coordinators

Learning Support Coordinators can now be employed full-time or part-time.

Allowances

  • The agreement increases all unit rates (permanent, fixed-term, additional) to $5,500 from 28 January 2026.
  • Middle and senior management allowances will increase to $2,400.
  • Reimbursement increase: Specialist Classroom Teachers can now apply for reimbursement of up to $1000 for costs related to post graduate qualifications.
  • There is a new Principal Nominee Allowance available from 26 April 2026. The allowance is for teachers (part-time or full-time) who liaise between the school and NZQA. It is a yearly allowance of $2,500 and is not pro-rated unless it’s a job-share between two teachers.
    For more information, see clause 4.27.10 of the STCA.
    You can add the allowance on the pay details change screen in EdPay or on either a Pay details change for teachers (EP2t) form or a Teaching unit / payment allocation / allowance change for teachers (EP16t) form. Pay code: PNA.

Individual employment agreement (IEA)

The new Secondary Teachers’ IEA was promulgated on 19 December 2025. If any employees at your school have signed this IEA, please go to the IEA change screen (My School > Administration > IEA change tab), click on the Secondary Teachers’ IEA, enter the date the employee signed the agreement and click SUBMIT.

Overpayments

Next week we will email some school principals with information about overpayments that Education Payroll has been unsuccessful in recovering and is unlikely to recover. Please take time to consider this information and discuss it with your Board, finance teams and auditors.

It is good practice to regularly review overpayments that are due to your school and to let us know if we need to step up our collection efforts or write off the debt.

School lunch programme employees

The 2025 School Caretakers, Cleaners and Canteen Staff Collective Agreement now includes school lunch programme employees.

Please set up new school lunch programme employees in EdPay as canteen staff workers.

Start of Year (SOY) reminders

The SOY screen closes at 5pm on 26 February 2026

Please check that the restart counter is on zero and that you have restarted all your employees before the SOY screen closes.

Download your SOY report

Please remember to download your SOY report before the screen closes. Your school’s auditors will need this report and it won’t be available after the SOY screen closes.

EdPay authorised users – adding new users, changing details or removing access

We sometimes get emails asking us to remove or add people to this newsletter’s mailing list. We’d like to help, but the mailing list is linked to our database of EdPay authorised users and we can’t make any changes to authorised users or their details without an official request.


Please download the latest version from our website forms page, as they are updated from time to time. Email forms to us here.

You can download the list of your school’s current authorised users from EdPay. Go to: EdPay > Reports > Authorised User Report.

For more information, see the authorised users page on our website.


Thanks for reading our payroll updates and keeping up with our news. We know that payroll may be only one of many jobs you do and we appreciate it.

Ngā mihi
Education Payroll