Kia ora koutou
We hope your school or kura had a good first term and that you’re well placed to tackle the rest of the year.
Apologies
We’re sorry for the confusion we caused with our reminder about public holidays and unpaid leave in the last payroll update. Thank you to the schools who contacted us. It’s a good reminder to us that the complexity of schools’ payrolls can’t always be captured in a quick ‘heads-up’.
More information about public holidays and unpaid leave
The reminder about public holidays and unpaid leave applies to many school employees. However, term time only employees are automatically paid for a public holiday that falls during a term break if they usually work on that day.
Easter break and Anzac Day payroll information
Payroll processing days
The Easter break and Anzac Day will affect our payroll processing days.
Booking leave for Easter Tuesday for non-teaching staff (52-week workers only) with more than 10 years’ service
Please remember to book annual leave or unpaid leave for 22 April 2025 (Easter Tuesday) for non-teaching staff (52-week workers only) with:
- more than 10 years’ service, and
- who normally work Tuesdays.
Clauses in the employment agreements for support staff, school caretakers, cleaners, canteen and ground staff, and kaiārahi i te reo and therapists state that employees with 10 years’ current continuous service are not entitled to Easter Tuesday as an additional paid holiday. See Part 6 of each employment agreement on the Ministry’s website.
For non-teaching staff with less than 10 years of service, Easter Tuesday is a paid public holiday.
As Easter is in the term break this year, you do not need to do anything for term time only and annualised employees.
Exception: Southland schools
Southland Anniversary Day falls on the same day as Easter Tuesday (22 April 2025). If your school’s regional anniversary is Southland, then it is an automatically paid public holiday and you don’t need to book Easter Tuesday leave for any employees.
Paying timesheet only employees
Please pay timesheet-only employees via timesheets for any public holidays during the term break that fall on days of the week they normally work.
Holiday pay reduction
At the beginning of each term break, holiday pay reductions are calculated for teachers who have taken unpaid leave during the term just ended.
If a holiday pay reduction is required, it will occur in the pay that falls over the term break and will appear on the SUE report as code HPR.
If employees want to find out how their reductions are calculated, they can check the remuneration / holiday pay section of their employment agreement.
Multi-factor authentication for EdPay via Education Sector Logon
Last year we asked schools for feedback about adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) to increase EdPay security. Most of your responses supported the idea. We investigated the options and decided to move EdPay under the Ministry’s Education Sector Logon (ESL) which already requires MFA. This will increase security for EdPay and the added benefit is that schools’ authorised users can logon to all their ESL programs, including EdPay, with a single sign on.
We are working with the Ministry to link your EdPay logon to your Education Sector Logon. We’ll test the linking process with Beta schools first and then implement it for all schools in term two. We will contact you soon with more information.
Thank you again for working alongside us through Start of Year and the busy first term. We hope you can recharge your batteries over the term break.
Ngā mihi
Education Payroll