John Key
Prime Minister John Key says compensation to schools to
halt legal action over the Novopay system is a possibility, if
the teacher unions would agree to a package.
The PPTA is considering legal action against the Education
Secretary over the troubled school staffing pay system, and
Mr Key said compensation to prevent that was possible if the
PPTA agreed to a package. He did not know what talks the
acting Education Secretary Peter Hughes had held with the
sector over the issue.
I think there has been an attempt to compensate, or at least
make whole, schools where there has been a cost. Some of
these are subjective costs, so they are about a use of time
where the argument is that a staff member has spent time
resolving pay issues rather than something else and that's a
more difficult thing to quantify.
He said he had not obtained any legal advice on a potential
legal suit, but said the PPTA was free to take the Government
to court.
However, the Government is working hard to try to resolve the
issues with the system.
We acknowledge some schools actually, a lot of schools have
had to spend more time than they otherwise would do resolving
their pay issues and this has come at some inconvenience and
potential cost to those schools.
He said the Government had already provided for schools to
cover underpaid or unpaid staff and for those schools to be
reimbursed by the Government.
- Claire Trevett of the New Zealand Herald
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