7 Oct 2012

School dealing with 'hard accents and lack of understanding'

4:29 pm on 7 October 2012

A school principal believes schools are not getting adequate support to help them cope with problems in the new payroll system.

Nevan Bridge from the Nelson Park School in Napier is rejecting the Ministry of Education's assertion that the Novopay system is improving.

The company's third pay cycle went out to more than 90,000 workers last week, and the ministry says fewer than 100 people were affected in this round.

But Mr Bridge says the ministry is giving a false impression that everything is going well.

He says his school is still dealing with problems from weeks ago and there is not enough support to make it easier.

Mr Bridge says his school is still dealing with problems from weeks ago and support staff on the Novapay help desk are incompetent.

"We spent two hours waiting for someone to speak to us. When we got through we got someone with an accent - now that was hard enough in itself but this person didn't know such things as leave without pay or could appreciate that most support staff get paid termly not weekly."

Mr Bridge says support staff should be trained better.

The Ministry of Education says work is continuing on improving the service.