Novopay’s ‘silent’ $100,000 weekly cost to schools

5 September 2013

Novopay’s ‘silent’ $100,000 weekly cost to schools

Novopay is costing the country’s schools an extra $100,000 per week in extra administration costs, according to an NZEI Te Riu Roa survey.

It’s been exactly a year since the beleaguered payroll system was introduced and schools now say that it has had a big impact on payroll staff as well as school resources.

National President Judith Nowotarski says this is effectively a shift in costs from the Ministry of Education to individual schools, yet no funding has followed.

The survey shows that Novopay, even when working as it should be, is shifting approximately $100,000 of extra costs on to schools each week.

“Nearly 75 percent of schools surveyed report that Novopay has had a significant or extreme impact on the administrative role at their school with the majority saying that the skills and responsibilities of their payroll staff have changed significantly and the job satisfaction of those staff has dropped significantly.”

“NZEI Te Riu Roa has long argued that schools were neither resourced nor trained adequately for the extra responsibilities the new pay system brought with it.

“This cost is being ‘silently’ borne by the staff and the schools themselves at the cost of their core work – educating our tamariki.”

Over half of schools advise they have had to shift resources to meet Novopay workload demands with 82.26 percent of respondents reporting that their administrator was working an extra two hours or more per week.

“Whilst these figures look small, multiply them over 2,500 schools and it’s not difficult to see 5,000 hours per week or $100,000 per week in work time across primary and intermediate schools that the schools themselves are having to find to fund Novopay.”

ENDS

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