Pay Parity

12/08/21

Pay parity for certificated teachers in education and care services

Pay parity is a hot topic at the moment and early childhood centers are currently front and center with the Government’s new funding initiative to increase the amount certified teachers are paid. This article from the Ministry of Education outlines who this funding increase applies to and the consequences if organisations choose to opt-in or opt-out.

Budget 2021 provides $170 million over four years for the purpose of improving the pay of certificated teachers working in education and care services.

Education and care services are teacher-led, centre-based early childhood services and are defined separately from kindergartens for Ministry of Education funding purposes.

The initiative is intended to target those certificated teachers earning the lowest levels of pay in education and care services.

The new money will become available in two stages and be paid through increases to the subsidy rates by which the Ministry pays education and care services.

From 1 July 2021, there will be an increase to the existing rates, which will be available to education and care services attesting to paying certificated teachers at least $51,358 per annum, up from $49,862 currently. The current rules that apply to the minimum attestation process will still apply. That is, if your service chooses not to attest to paying all your certificated teachers at least $51,358 per annum from 1 July 2021, your funding will drop to the 0-24% certificated teachers band.

From 1 January 2022, subject to the passage of the Education and Training (Grants – Budget Measures) Amendment Bill, an additional set of higher premium rates will be made available. Education and care services that agree to pay, at a minimum, their certificated teachers at the first six of the eleven applicable pay steps set out in the Kindergarten Teachers, Head Teachers and Senior Teachers’ Collective Agreement 2019-2022 would be paid the new premium rates. As is currently the case, there will be different bands of rates adjusted for the proportion of child hours provided by certificated teachers.

If your service does not opt into these rates but is still paying all certificated teachers at least $51,358 per annum, your funding will continue according to the proportion of certificated teachers working with children. You would not drop to the 0-24% certificated teachers band because you do not opt into the new higher premium funding rates.

The Government has now introduced the Education and Training (Grants – Budget Measures) Amendment Bill to enable this latter part of the initiative to occur by January 2022.

Government’s unequivocal expectation is that new funding remaining after meeting any pay attestation requirements will still be allocated to improve pay for certificated teachers.

The funding continues the move towards teacher pay parity initiated by the Government in Budget 2020, when $151.1 million over four years was allocated for the purpose.

The current funding system, which uses an average cost funding approach to resource services, is not able to accurately allocate funding to meet the additional salary cost for each education and care service. This is why the initiative allows services to opt-in to premium rates. It also means that whether a teacher receives a pay adjustment is dependent on whether the employing service has opted-in.

Because of the limitations of the current funding system, the Minister referred to the need to revise the funding system to achieve the goal of pay parity in his announcement on Wednesday 12 May. The nature of the work is still to be scoped. We’ll provide more information in the coming weeks.

The Ministry will work with the sector to develop more detailed implementation guidelines for centres.

To read the full article with FAQs see here.