Novopay No Better

Novopay No Better

The Novopay system for paying the country’s teachers has long been described as a train wreck in slow motion. The latest survey of New Zealand school principals confirms that after seven months the wreck continues to advance and schools are at the end of their tether.

‘Our latest survey results from 1,155 respondents are the most disturbing of all six surveys we have conducted since last October,’ said Philip Harding, President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF).

The proportion of schools experiencing on-going Novopay issues has leapt from 86% in October 2012 to 96%. Now, administration staff are resigning. Principals reported that as a direct result of Novopay stress, twenty-three staff have resigned their positions. Alongside those who have left, principals say there are hundreds who are under unreasonable stress and many more are considering resignation.

‘This is a distressing finding,’ says Harding. ‘We can reasonably assume that our survey respondents are representative of all schools. We can therefore extrapolate from the data that there could be as many as 50 resignations across the country and many more at breaking point,’ he said.

Other results for the 1,155 respondents showed 25,585 staff were incorrectly paid in the last pay period, and 55.5% of schools paid staff from their own school funds.

‘Novopay is out of control. We cannot stand by and watch schools lose highly valuable staff through the stress of trying to make a completely dysfunctional Novopay system behave rationally,’ said Harding.’

ENDS

© Scoop Media