Media Release
Schools will struggle to fund
future pay rises for school staff
The Government’s failure to give schools enough money to operate means NZSTA cannot
support significant pay rises for non-teaching staff, says the New Zealand School Trustees
Association.
President Lorraine Kerr says the Government’s lack of action over the woeful inadequacy of
schools’ operations funding is now coming to a crunch point.
“We know the primary teachers union, the NZEI, will be lodging a pay claim for support staff in
schools later this year. But schools, already struggling with ongoing underfunding cannot afford
to meet this claim without significant cuts elsewhere.”
The union is expected to not only seek a flow on of the minimum $2 hr based on the
caretakers/cleaners settlement, but will also look for subsequent adjustments to margins to retain
“relativities” within scales, as well as a restructuring of support staff scales themselves.
Lorraine Kerr says that while the Prime Minister, at the NZEI conference, confirmed that the
Government is prepared to provide the additional funding required for a “pay jolt” to raise pay
rates for low paid support staff, this commitment to fund will only affect a very small number of
support staff.
NZSTA has calculated that governments commitment will only affect some 7,000 support staff
(approx 2,650 FTEs), potentially leaving the costs of any pay rise for the remaining 20,000
support staff to fall on boards of trustees.
Any translation to new restructured support staff scales, and bigger incremental steps would also
add significant extra costs to boards, she says.
“The way matters stand at present NZSTA cannot be supportive of any such claim for support
staff given the significant potential costs to boards, particularly at a time when board’s operations
grants are already under considerable stress.”
NZSTA and other sector groups have been seeking a significant increase in operations grant
funding for a number of years now. While the 2007 review of schools operational funding clearly
identified the cost pressures boards are facing, there has been no real commitment on the part of
government to actually address the issues of underfunding.
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“NZSTA cannot agree to large wage and restructuring costs being dumped on boards when we
know that their capacity to continually absorb such significant costs within an already inadequate
operations grant is very limited, and in some cases, simply cannot be done,” Lorraine Kerr says.
The need for government to meet current cost pressures through adequate funding is critical when
it is considered that since 1989 boards of trustees have had to absorb the costs of:
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A huge increase in the number of support staff in schools, from approximately 10,000 in
1989 to approximately 26-27,000 today
The failure of cost/price adjustments, commonly made in each budget, to provide for the
real cost effects of pay settlements
The effect of incremental progression of between 3-4% each year, in addition to any
negotiated percentage increase.
These are on top of a myriad of other costs, such as ICT costs, copyright, and compliance costs
which have never been funded by government, Lorraine Kerr says.
NZSTA members find it very difficult to understand why government continues to ignore the
plight of boards in their attempt to run their schools on an increasingly inadequate operations
grant, especially when the Government’s expectations of boards is to personalise learning and
increase student achievement, she says.
“It makes no sense to place boards in this ‘no win’ situation by claiming there is no additional
funding available when there seems to be no problem in finding $1 billion to $1.5 billion to settle
teachers salary and staffing claims.
“By comparison, we know that an injection of as little as $100 million over and above inflation
would make a huge difference to schools.”
It has been recently reported in the 2007 Schools Sector report that boards raised $565 million in
locally raised funds in 2007, in addition to the $1.2 billion in operational grant funding provided
directly to boards of trustees.
Lorraine Kerr says boards of trustees raised a record amount in locally raised funds in 2007, but
this cannot be counted on to continue given the current economic climate.
A reduction in locally raised funds in the future is a distinct possibility, as the overall financial
situation tightens. And, any such contraction of locally raised funds will simply exacerbate an
already tenuous situation, she says.
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For more information contact Lorraine Kerr on 021 736 596 or 07 333 9324.