The government accepted a recommendation from an arbitration panel to increase secondary teacher pay by about 14.5 percent. Photo: 123RF
The Post Primary Teachers Association is happy with the government's latest pay offer, but says there are still issues that need to be addressed.
Secondary school teachers have agreed to a pay rise of about 14.5 percent after months of protests and negotiations.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti said it meant beginning teachers would get nearly $10,000 a year more on top of a $7210 lump sum payment.
Two-thirds of secondary teachers will earn a base salary of more than $100,000 a year, by the end of 2024.
The pay rise follows 18 months of industrial action including strike action and resulted in the PPTA and Ministry of Education agreeing to an arbitration process.
"It's hit some key areas but there's some areas of work still needed there" - Chris Abercrombie
PPTA Te Wehengarua acting president Chris Abercrombie said the deal was "good enough" but some key areas still needed work.
"One of our key areas is particularly support for our Māori teachers, we're asking more and more of our Māori colleagues in schools with increasing importance of mataranga Māori in our curriculum and so we wanted more support for them, but unfortunately we couldn't get it this time."
The arbitration panel recommended that schools should be working with the Ministry of Education to get it sorted, he said.
There was an element of catching up in the deal, he said.
"We see this in education where we have sort of a long period of decline and then we need to have to fight really hard to get back up, so we're really hopeful with some of the recommendations that have come out that we won't have to do that again."
The pay deal would likely help with retention issues more than recruitment of teachers, he said.
"There are some elements of recruitment there as well because we know that when people start a new job, they look at their end pay not their start pay but also beginning teachers - so if you're a beginning teacher in 2025 in your first year, you'll be $10,000 better off than if you're a beginning teacher at the start of this year."
The union would like to look at an automatic salary adjustment mechanism which could perhaps be tied to a cost index or a relativity clause, so they did not have to fight about pay at every negotiation, he said.
Even with the increase, pay for New Zealand teachers still lagged behind that of their Australian counterparts, he said.
The pay deal that has just been ratified will last until mid-2025, he said.
"An agreed clause means that should either party during this negotiation get improvements to the basic pay scale, it will be passed on to the other party" - Mark Potter
Meanwhile primary school teachers' are in line for a pay increase off the back of the pay deal secured by secondary school staff.
NZEI Te Riu Roa president Mark Potter told Morning Report it would flow on to other primary teachers because of an agreed clause that meant if either party achieved a better pay scale through negotiation, it would be passed on to the other party.
"The PPTA has successfully gone through this mediation process and got a further increase on the basic pay scale from what our members voted to accept earlier this year, now we also get the difference between the two."
That meant the top pay scales for primary teachers would be increased by about $3000 in addition to the increase that the NZEI had already negotiated, he said. Ultimately it would mean an increase in each of the teacher's pay scales, he said.
The increase would help to retain and attract staff but they would need to keep working on resourcing and workload issues, he said.
The increase could flow on to some early childhood and kindergarten teachers as well.