Novopay shambles over payments cause schools serious stress

12 December 2012

Novopay shambles over end-of-year payments causing schools serious stress

Novopay is still riddled with errors and many school support staff and principals trying to finalise end-of-year payments are now seriously stressed.

NZEI National President Ian Leckie says schools are dealing with a myriad of problems in trying to reconcile the end-of-year pay runs.

“We’ve had calls from school administration staff and principals who are in tears or virtually pulling their hair out in frustration – the problems are huge and endemic throughout the country.’

Mr Leckie says based on the kinds of issues that are now being dealt with it’s likely that most schools, if not all, will have problems to sort out before the end of the year.

“We’ve got issues around superannuation, over-payments for school support staff, as well issues around teachers on fixed term contracts and teachers’ redundancy payments at closing schools.

“In one case, Novopay has paid a school support staff member for 60 days when they should have been paid for 60 hours.

In another example, a school has had staff paid for one and a half days over a day-long period while non-teaching staff have been paid holiday pay out of the school’s operations grant when they were not entitled to it.

“Other issues have involved superannuation deductions not being applied to individual staff super accounts. This is particularly alarming for members who are about to retire because their accounts are in arrears and their drawings will be affected.

“Novopay is not improving despite Ministry of Education claims and many school administration staff and principals are now very stressed. This is not fair on principals and school administration staff, particularly at this time of the year.

“The Ministry of Education has unleashed a catastrophe and we don’t believe this is something that can be sorted this side of Christmas.”

ENDS

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