PM Chris Hipkins responds to recommended 14.5pc pay rise for teachers

Cabinet will look at where it can take money from within the education budget to fund the recommended 14.5 per cent pay rise for secondary teachers.

An arbitration panel recommended secondary teachers get the pay rise spread over three instalments.

If accepted by both parties the recommended settlement is likely to have knock-on effects for early childhood and primary school teachers. Under pay parity rules, the Ministry of Education must offer any changes to teachers’ unified base salary scale to primary teachers and then in turn to kindergarten teachers.

Hipkins says resolving the teachers’ pay dispute comes with a “very big price tag”.

It would cost many billions of dollars, he told TVNZ.

“That’s not the sort of money you find down the back of the couch.”

Hipkins told Newstalk ZB the government was “working our way on how we will pay for it”.

The increase would shift starting pay for most new secondary teachers from $55,948 to $64,082 by the start of 2025, while pay rates for teachers at the top of the scale would increase from $90,000 to $103,085.

That appeared to be better than the pay scale recently agreed by primary teachers where the equivalent points on the pay scale would increase to $63,187 and $100,000.

The panel said the term of the new collective agreement should be three years, from July 3, 2022, to July 2, 2025.

The panel also recommended one-off payments of $5000 for all teachers, a further $1500 for PPTA members, and up to $710 to cover teaching practising certificate renewal.

The decision said the Post Primary Teachers Association had sought a pay rise totalling 17.9 per cent backdated to the end of the previous collective agreement on July 1, 2022, while the Ministry of Education was offering 11.1 per cent starting from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2025.

Secondary teachers had not had a pay rise since July 1, 2021, it said.

“Undeniably, the value of their salaries has diminished significantly over that period due to annual inflation, as measured by the New Zealand Consumers Price Index (CPI) in the years to June 2022 (7.3 per cent) and June 2023 (6.0 per cent),” the panel said.

- with RNZ