Teachers under stress in pay fiasco

Thousands of Western Bay education professionals have been plagued by pay inaccuracies because of the faulty Novopay system - including one support staff member who has not been paid in two months.

Nearly every school in the Western Bay has been affected since the implementation of the $26 million Novopay payroll system in August.

Teachers and support staff have been underpaid, overpaid or had vital details changed, including tax codes and teaching numbers, which should stay with someone for the duration of their teaching career.

Principal of Kaka Street Special School, Barrie Wickens, said just under half of the staff had issues with their last pay.

"There are some people who haven't been paid in weeks. There are others who have been overpaid and it's not easy to fix. There are lots of forms to fill out then you have to send it all back to Novopay, which is the organisation that's got it wrong in the first place.

"This is a big deal and there are 105,000 people on the payroll, 35,000 of them are teachers and the rest are support staff. Most of these people are on an hourly rate, they have a mortgage to pay and they have a family to support. And when they're working and money isn't coming in, they're being put under immense pressure through no fault of their own."

Mount Maunganui College has had to fork out $10,000 from its operations grant to pay teachers who had been underpaid in recent weeks.

Principal Russell Gordon said that money would have gone toward student learning.

"I guess the kids are missing out because we would have brought in a special teacher for a specific area of study and we haven't been able to do that."

His business manager has also had to put her everyday job aside to work through Novopay problems.

"She has devoted more than 60 hours this last month to Novopay and because of this, her normal responsibilities have had to have been put on hold so she is way behind in her work.

"Novopay has created a huge workload for executive officers, business managers and principals who are required to deal with continuing problems that appear systemic in nature, and are unlikely to be remedied anytime soon.

"These errors have led to financial hardship for teachers, relievers and support staff, as well as tying up valuable school resources."

Some schools have had to employ additional staff because of the added workload stress.

Most of the latest pay issues at Mount Maunganui College involved underpayment, but one involved overpayment where a staff member was paid for two weeks while he was in France on an 18-month leave of absence.

Mr Gordon was also aware of problems at Matua School, where he is a board member.

Payroll provider, Talent2, last week issued a statement apologising to those affected in the change from the old payroll system to Novopay.

The statement said Talent2 and the Ministry of Education had been working "around the clock" to resolve the issues surrounding the system transition.

Group chief executive officer John Rawlinson said: "Given the size and complexity of this implementation, there were inevitable teething issues during the transition period. For a payroll of this complexity it is not unusual for a very small percentage of those being paid to have issues with their pay.

"We are genuinely sorry for the stress that this has caused the education sector and we are confident we can resolve the issues."

Tauranga Boys' College principal Robert Mangan does not have faith in Novopay and does not believe the problems will be sorted by Christmas.

"I would say I have faith in it only after I've seen it working but at this stage there are still a significant number of errors, which are very concerning."

Mr Mangan was aware of one relief teacher having not been paid for at least two months. He was also aware that some teachers were not being paid correct amounts according to their pay scale.

"Despite all this you've got to be optimistic and wait for it all to get settled and you've got to have a certain amount of patience. But this patience is starting to wear thin because we have seen lots of mistakes and no real changes. They need to put their words into action and remedy the situation."

The Secretary for Education Lesley Longstone said a specialist team from the Education Ministry and Talent2 were in the process of calling schools about their end-of-year reports to get a full understanding of the current issues.

Novopay owner Rebecca Elvy said flaws in the Novopay payroll system had been targeted for repair before the year's end.