Short-term relievers minimum payments
Teacher employment agreements state that day relievers must be paid for a minimum of two hours per day if they are employed by a school.
When a timesheet is received for less than two hours (in one or more bookings), the short-term reliever's pay will be topped up to two hours. The Ministry of Education has worked with EPL to implement automatic top-up payments to short-term relievers. These payments appear under the payroll code “DDRUP”.
This top-up payment does not count as service, as it does not reflect hours worked.
Schools should only submit timesheets for the actual hours worked. EdPay automatically adjusts the DDRUP top-up value as per the timesheets submitted for actual hours worked.
The automated process enters a top-up payment where a short-term reliever has worked for less than two hours, per school, per day. This is funded through the original relief booking allocation. If this is from teachers’ salaries, then this will generate banking staffing usage.
The Ministry is looking into the historical impact of this error and will communicate further on these once investigations are completed.
If you have any further questions about this please contact the Ministry of Education on MW.Mailbox@education.govt.nz
Remediation payments
On 3 September 2024, The Ministry of Education will begin contacting around 8,000 former employees who are due remediation for the short-term relief teacher two-hour minimum contractual entitlement.
Primary, secondary and area school teachers’ collective agreements state that short-term relief teachers will be paid for no less than two hours per day of day relief or paid leave at a school, but this has not always happened.
An improved process was put in place from 10 August 2022 to fix this. Payments are being made to correct errors between 17 April 2012 and 9 August 2022.
On June 25, two-hour minimum top-up payments totalling $9.89million were made to around 11,900 current short-term relief teachers.
Around 330 employees who were not identified as current for the payment on 25 June, but who were identified as current on 20 August, will receive any top-up they are owed for the short-term relief teacher two-hour minimum on 17 September.
Former employees owed any short-term relief teacher two-hour minimum entitlement top-up payment will be contacted via email, text and/or letter. Those due a payment will be asked to confirm their details, so we can process the payment correctly.
No additional action is required from employees, principals or administrators to support the payment.
For more information, see the Ministry website: Two-hour minimum entitlement remediation | Education Workforce