Otamarakau School principal Andrea Dance earns $250 a fortnight less than her deputy. Photo / Supplied
Otamarakau School principal Andrea Dance earns $250 a fortnight less than her deputy. Photo / Supplied
"Despondent" primary school principals will vote next week on a proposed national strike over pay rates, which in some cases have fallen behind other teachers in their schools.
Andrea Dance, the principal of small rural Otamarakau School near Te Puke, says she earns $250 a fortnight less than her deputy principal, who is also lead teacher for special needs across the 11 schools in the Te Puke Community of Learning.
"That's because she has got this leadership role, which is fantastic, I'm very supportive of that," Dance said.
But she said the anomaly dramatised the need to lift pay rates for principals of other small rural schools that struggled to attract experienced teachers.
"It's a wonderful pathway for principals, but you're just feeling devalued in that type of pathway," she said.
Berhampore School principal Mark Potter, who represents primary principals on the NZ Educational Institute (NZEI) executive, said principals would hold stopwork meetings from August 12 to 15 to vote on a proposed one-day strike on August 22 unless the Ministry of Education offered a better deal before then.
Rank-and-file teachers voted in June to accept a $1.5 billion package including pay rises of 3 per cent a year for three years plus an extra step at the top of the pay scale which will give senior teachers an effective pay rise of 12 per cent, taking teachers at the top of the basic scale to $90,000 by July 2021.
However the ministry has offered principals only the basic 3 per cent a year, lifting salaries for principals in the biggest schools by only 9 per cent over three years.
Otamarakau School principal Andrea Dance (right), pictured with some of her 76 students last year, has been offered a 13 per cent pay rise by 2021. Photo / File
The pay offer for principals in small schools such as Otamarakau, with between 50 and 100 students, is a bigger 13 per cent over three years, from $93,337 now to $105,684 by July 2021 including allowances.
Ministry of Education deputy secretary Ellen MacGregor-Reid has previously said that the ministry's offer to primary principals was worth $64 million over three years and the ministry was "talking with the NZEI to understand how the offer might be adjusted within the $64m to best meet their members' needs".
The ministry and the two teacher unions have also agreed on an "accord" to discuss longer-term issues such as workload and a potential unified pay scale for primary and secondary principals.
Mark Potter, pictured (far right) with colleagues at an NZEI conference, says primary principals have to renegotiate pay parity with secondary principals every time. Photo / File
Potter said primary principals had achieved the same pay rates as secondary principals for the same-sized schools and principal qualifications in previous years, but needed to negotiate it again every time.
"There is a gap because of a difference in timing. Secondary principals are ahead of us in terms of having increases," he said.
MacGregor-Reid said on Sunday night that the ministry would be talking with the union again this week.
"We have continued to be available to work with the NZEI about how to repackage an offer, alongside the Accord, to best meet their members' needs, including pay parity," she said.
Secondary principals started their pay talks after the other groups. Secondary Principals' Association lead negotiator Scott Haines said talks were likely to resume next week.
An update sent to secondary principals on Thursday afternoon said: "The next update will be the one to look out for. We will either have an offer, or we will be recommending industrial action for your consideration."
