Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Ministry says latest school pay day best yet

Updated at 10:52 pm on 28 November 2012

The Ministry of Education says the latest school pay day is the best yet delivered by its new payroll system.

Thousands of staff have been incorrectly paid since the Novopay system was introduced in August this year.

The ministry says Wednesday's pay to more than 92,000 school staff was the cleanest yet and it has not been informed of any unexpected under- or over-payments.

Schools say there were new mistakes and some old problems have still not been fixed, but admit the latest pay has been better than previous rounds.

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Ministry to review payroll introduction

The ministry will commission an independent review in 2013 of its implementation of the new pay system.

Secretary for Education Lesley Longstone was questioned on Wednesday by Parliament's Education and Science select committee about the system.

Ms Longstone told the committee the main problems are in the parts of Novopay that provide input and output of pay information, but the core of the system is sound.

She said the ministry would do things differently if it had a second chance at introducing Novopay and the review will show what it could have done better.

Ms Longstone told the MPs a trial run of the system was not possible because too many teachers work at more than one school.

She said the payroll is the most complex in Australasia because it covers 13 different collective agreements and there are 10,000 possible combinations of pay entitlements.

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