Employment of Support Staff

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	• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •	Inclusion of support staff in all staff processes Employers obligations School planning Job descriptions Appraisal Appointments Letters of appointment Permanent or Fixed Term Employment Agreements Budgeting Pay Scales Other Employment Conditions Professional development and training Police vets Further information

Inclusion of support staff in all staff processes

Support staff are an integral part of any school. They are part of the total staff of the whole school even though their funding comes via different channels from teachers. Because of this boards and principals are more directly involved in the terms and conditions of employment of support staff than they are of teachers. Principals who foster positive and inclusive attitudes towards support staff enhance both their school climate and the attitudes of staff to their employment.

Employers obligations

This section reminds principals of their rights and obligations as employers under the Employment Relations Act (ERA) 2000, other relevant legislation and of the collective agreements covering support staff. Collective agreements are legal documents and consequences of not applying them correctly can be costly to boards.

School planning

Analysing school needs
School planning requirements should contain specific sections in staff plans for support staff requirements, contingencies and developments. Planning processes that identify what is needed to support the school's long and short term plans should involve consultation with teaching, senior staff and support staff themselves. From this, options and arrangements for support staff tasks can be identified. While some support staff tasks will be ongoing, special projects may be planned as well.

Policy and budgets
Support staff need to be made aware of school policy decisions. School policy should clearly outline what tasks are expected of support staff.

School budgets should clearly define funding arrangements for the employment of support staff. Budgets should also account for on-going employment costs and liabilities of employing support staff.

Job descriptions

Open processes
Up-to-date job descriptions that have been agreed between the parties and which reflect how support staff fit into the overall plans of the school, will contribute to a professional climate and to a good employment relationship. Senior staff as well as support staff should be consulted as to the most suitable arrangements for support staff tasks to be carried out. Click here to view the section on Job Descriptions and Performance Agreements.

A working document
The tasks described in a job description will identify what the position is and in which pay scale and grade it falls. Job descriptions are not usually static documents as the needs of a school may change. It may be necessary to consider regrading positions if the tasks required have changed and now fall predominantly in another grade. Both NZEI and NZSTA should be consulted if regrading is required.

Consultation
Work with children in special education requires consultation with parents and outside agencies before job descriptions are confirmed. Where special short-term (fixed term) projects or positions are required, job descriptions need to be discussed and agreed to by support staff.

Appraisal

The annual appraisal process is usually an opportunity to ensure that job descriptions are current and reflect the realities of the work being done by support staff and the tasks required from the annual school planning cycle.

Appraisal can also identify professional development and training needs of support staff.

The process of appraisal and negotiating job descriptions should always be timely, transparent and agreed to (refer to Job Descriptions for Support Staff, available from NZEI field staff, and click here to view the section on Performance Management and Appraisal)

Appointments

Same processes as for teachers
Support staff should be appointed in the same manner as teaching staff, with an appointments committee consisting of more than just the principal. For more information on appointing staff, click here to view the section Appointments.

Schools are legally required to obtain a "police vet" before appointing support staff. Every school is required to have careful systems to handle this process and maintain "strict confidentiality". Click here for more information on Police Vetting.

Letters of appointment

All new support staff must have a letter of appointment. Not only is it a requirement of the collective agreements it is an important means by which to prevent misunderstandings. It should clearly specify:

What the job is
The commencement date
The salary to be paid
The hours and weeks to be worked
The other conditions under which the work is to be performed.

All appointments, including support staff, are permanent unless identified as being fixed term. Therefore the appointment letter must also state whether the position is permanent or fixed term.

Permanent or Fixed Term

Most support staff positions should be permanent as most tasks required of support staff are on-going within the school. Fixed term positions should only exist where an employer can be clear about when the work will finish i.e. the work will not be on-going.

The Employment Relations Act (ERA) details the requirements for establishing fixed term appointments. The clauses in the collective agreements about fixed term appointments are the same words as s66 of the ERA.

Requirements of the ERA
If a position is to be fixed term / temporary / limited duration, the ERA requires that the employer must have genuine reasons based on reasonable grounds for the employment to be of a fixed term nature. Employers must state in writing that a position is fixed term, how the employment will end and why it will end this way. The ERA requires that the end must be identified as one of the following:

At the close of a specified date or period
On the occurrence of a specified event
At the conclusion of a specified project.

This needs to be stated in the letter of appointment. Since December 2004, all fixed term arrangements MUST be in writing.

The ERA does not allow a fixed term appointment to be made to 'try out' the suitability of an applicant for a job. Nor should fixed term agreements be established to exclude or limit the rights of an employee under the ERA. A fixed term position should not be established just to avoid any likelihood of paying redundancy later.

A guide to fixed term
The requirements of the employment legislation (the ERA) surrounding fixed term appointments mean that schools need to exercise great care about creating fixed term positions by ensuring that they have genuine reasons. Boards can incur costs if this is later challenged and their reasons are found to be inconsistent with the law. A general guide is that if it is likely that there will be on-going work, then schools should make a position permanent. If it is known that there will be no more work at the end of the period then a fixed term position will be legitimate.

Examples of fixed term
Normally fixed term appointments would only be applicable in relieving positions when a permanent staff member is on leave, or the school requires a special and finite project to be carried out, or it is known that funding for a specific purpose will completely stop at a particular point. Where it is more likely that funding will continue schools would not have a genuine reason for a fixed term appointment.

Click here for sample letters of appointment for permanent and fixed term positions.

Employment Agreements

All schools are bound
There are two major collective agreements negotiated by NZEI Te Riu Roa which cover support staff in all types of state and integrated schools. They are:

1. The Support Staff in Schools Collective Agreement

This agreement covers two groups:

Associate staff (working indirectly or directly with teachers and students e.g. teacher aides, librarians, technicians, sports and arts coordinators) and,
Administrative staff (e.g. secretarial work, office/financial/property management)

2. Kaiarahi i Te Reo, Therapists, Assistants to Teachers of Students with Severe Disabilities and Special Education Assistants' Collective Agreement

This agreement covers four specific positions:

Kaiarahi i te reo who, through their understanding of te reo Maori, assist with te reo Maori programmes
Therapists (occupational therapists and physiotherapists)
Assistants to teachers of students with severe disabilities (ATSSD) who assist with the education of students with severe disabilities
Special education assistants (SEA) who assist with the education of students with physical disabilities.

Note: The Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU), negotiates a collective agreement for the caretakers, cleaners, grounds-people and canteen workers in schools.

Legal documents
All boards of trustees are bound by these agreements. Collective agreements are legally binding. Boards receive copies of these collective agreements from NZSTA, principals receive a copy from NZEI Te Riu Roa, individual members and NZEI worksite representatives also receive individual copies.

The provisions of the ERA regarding collective agreements

The provisions of the ERA mean that:

all new employees must be employed on the same terms and conditions as the applicable collective agreement for the first 30 days of employment, after which they must either join the union and go on the collective or not join the union and stay on an individual employment agreement
at the time of appointment new employees must be told about the applicable collective agreement and how to contact the union (NZEI or SFWU). NZEI has a card with all the required information that it provides to principals to give to new employees (contact your regional office)
all support staff employees who are members of, or join NZEI Te Riu Roa, are automatically covered by the applicable agreement and are therefore entitled to those terms and conditions of employment
employees cannot be discriminated against in terms of their choice of whether to join a union or not
an individual may have an individual agreement as well as the collective agreement for additional terms and conditions. However it must not be inconsistent with the collective agreement.

Budgeting

Boards of Trustees need to budget to allow for all their ongoing employment costs and liabilities. Click here to refer also to the section on Budgeting..

(i) Costs will need to be met out of the operations grant and other funding which the school receives or raises.
(ii) Boards have the legal obligation to be good employers and apply employment agreements correctly.
(iii) Employment relationship problems can be costly for boards. Arrears in pay can be sought for up to 6 years if insufficient payments have been made.

Pay Scales

Increases
The operations grant is increased each January and negotiated increases to the basic pay scales of the collective agreements have been brought into this timeframe.

Support Staff are entitled to annual increments (moving to the next step on the appropriate scale) and the negotiated percentage increases.

Which pay scale
There are different pay scales for administrative and associate staff both of whom may be employed on salaries or hourly rates and for term time only or longer. All therapists, kaiarahi i te reo, assistants to teachers of students with severe disabilities (ATSSDs) and special education assistants (SEAs) are salaried and employed in full time or proportional positions for 52 weeks of the year.

Grading
There are three levels of grading within the administrative and associate classes of employment. The requirements of the position determine which grade an employee is paid at. Grade A of each classification is a closely supervised position where an employee follows well defined procedures. Grade B positions lack the close supervision and include a range of duties where some advanced knowledge, skills and experience are required. Grade C are positions where specialist knowledge and high levels of responsibility are required. Examples for each grade are given in the agreement to help guide employers

Annual increments
All the pay scales have annual increments except for the upper levels of the Administrative Grade C scale. A salary review must occur annually unless a staff member is already at the top of the grade. Schools need to keep records and have proper processes to ensure that employees receive their annual increments when they are due as schools are not notified by payroll centres to do this. These increments are in addition to the percentage increases negotiated to the pay scales as a whole.

Annualisation of Earnings
Annualisation is where an employee’s earning for part of a year is averaged out over a whole year, e.g. a teacher aide who works for 40 weeks a year has her earning averaged out so that she receives a smaller amount of pay over the whole year.

Annualisation is only available to permanently employed staff bound by the SSCA. It is not available to support staff employed on a fixed-term basis.

Annualisation requires agreement of an employee and his/her employer. The agreement will be recorded in the template annualisation form which requires the signature of both the employee and the employer. A copy must be given to the employee.

The template annualisation form must be submitted electronically with the Payroll Start of Year forms (due to payroll centres by approximately Dec 1 each year). A link to this template can be found on the NZEI website.

Any period of annualisation must begin at the start of pay period 23 (i.e. the pay period that begins closest to February 1) in any year and run until the end of pay period 22 the following year (12 months).

Where an employee commences employment during the year he/she will not have access to the option of annualisation of projected earnings until the following year. Unless there is agreement to discontinue the arrangement, once a period of annualisation has commenced it shall continue for the full 12-month period.

At the beginning of term two, the employer and the employee shall meet to review the annualisation arrangement to ensure that both parties are satisfied that the annualisation calculation is accurate and to ensure that any variations have been addressed.

The continuation of an annualisation arrangement from year to year will require the continued agreement of the employer and employee.

Minimum rates
Note: Schools may choose to pay above the printed rates in the Support Staff in Schools Collective Agreement as it is a minimum rates document.

Other Employment Conditions

As well as budgeting to meet the costs of percentage increases and increments, schools need to budget to pay for:

(a) Qualifications allowances
Both agreements have a list of qualifications for which support staff will receive an allowance. There are three levels of allowance which relate to different levels of qualifications. This is paid in addition to their established rate of pay from the pay scales.

(b) Allowances (for details on the current rates, click here)
Mileage is paid when an employee is required to use their private vehicle on school business.

The first aid allowance is paid to designated first aiders in a school. Schools must also meet the cost of first aid certificates.

The dirty work allowance is paid once a day when an administrative or associate staff member has been involved in cleaning-up a pupil soiled by vomit, excreta, urine or body fluids. It is payable when a student requires assistance in this process.

An overnight allowance is paid for administrative and associate staff and salaried employees when they attend school camps etc.

Protective clothing must be provided by the employer where work requires this. Cost of laundering is paid by the employer. Staff required to work in swimming pools assisting children can claim reimbursement for swimwear on the production of receipts.

(c) Professional development and training
There are provisions for both. What is professional development for one staff member may be training for another. See section below.

(d) Sick leave and domestic leave.
Support staff can accumulate 7 days sick leave a year (6 days for staff who work less than 5 days per working week) - note that some long serving staff have a grand-parented provision. Those covered by the kaiarahi i te reo et al agreement have different sick leave provisions.

Whether part-time or not, sick leave accumulates day for day and is used day for day. Payroll services operate this way and schools need only notify payroll which days a staff member was away sick, not what hours they work on those days.

Domestic leave is counted against sick leave up to 8 days in a year for support staff and up to 5 days for the other agreement. Support staff should not be asked to 'make-up' for days they have off on sick or domestic leave. Where necessary schools need to employ relieving staff.

(e) Annual leave and long service leave.
Annual leave for support staff is 4 weeks per year and 4.6 weeks per year from Jan 2008 for employees with 5 or more years’ continuous service, and 5 weeks from Jan 2010 for employees with 10 or more years’ continuous service. Those entitled to 5 weeks’ leave must include the day after Boxing Day and Easter Tuesday into their annual leave, see below.

Long service leave is applicable after 25 years to most support staff groups (for those employed prior to 1992 there are different provisions).

(f) Public holidays
The twelve public holidays are paid days for all support staff where they fall on a weekday. Payment is made for Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Day and the day after New Years Day for all staff who have worked within 10 days of the last day the school is open for instruction. For hourly paid employees they are paid at a rate based on 1/10 of their normal fortnightly pay for each day. Administrative staff and therapists receive one additional day after Boxing Day as well. From January 1 2010 , any employee with 10 years current continuous service will have the day after Boxing Day (where applicable) and Easter Tuesday incorporated into their 5 weeks annual leave.

(g) Paid morning and afternoon breaks.
All support staff are entitled to a paid breaks. Staff who work 5 hours or more per day are entitled to either one twenty minute break in the morning, or one ten minute break in the morning and one ten minute break in the afternoon. Staff working 2 hours or more, but less than 5 hour per day are entitled to either one ten minute break in the morning or one ten minute break in the afternoon. When hours of work are established these should be accounted for and time made for staff to have the breaks. Sometimes a 20 minute break is taken in the morning with no break in the afternoon. This is acceptable.

(h) Surplus staffing provisions.
These provisions detail processes to work through should a surplus staffing situation arise. Refer also to the section on Surplus Staffing. Inform NZEI if a redundancy situation occurs in your school. Discussion with a field officer can help ensure that safeguards for staff and the school are complied with.

It is unlikely that schools will have major redundancy payments to make from surplus staffing situations unless they are entering into restructuring, mergers or closures. In many situations suitable alternative work can be found and schools do not then need to pay redundancy. This applies especially to ORRS funded teacher aides as many children with special needs pass through schools - some leave and others start.

Good systems and employment records
Schools need to have systems in place so that the budgeting, administration and accounting for all these employment provisions are met and that it is clear and accurate. Some of these provisions vary between the two collective agreements. Good employers ensure that their staff receive all the entitlements due to them. Employers have obligations to keep full employment records of and for their staff.

NZEI provides a Support Staff Check to enable principals to ensure they have met all the requirements. Contact your regional office for details of this check.

Union membership
Boards need to be mindful that at any time, any support staff person upon joining their union (NZEI Te Riu Roa) is automatically entitled to the terms and conditions of the applicable collective agreement. There may be budgetary implications from this.

Professional development and training

A school can benefit from investment in their support staff by building a qualified, skilled and trained support staff team. Support staff should be given the opportunity to improve their skills on a regular and planned basis. This should be budgeted for as it is for other staff.

Support staff are entitled to training to enable them to meet changes and developments in their existing jobs, especially in technology. Costs of training are to be met by the schools and it shall be in paid time, whether within their normal hours of work or not.

Schools and support staff are to identify and discuss appropriate professional development. This should occur at least annually and where possible be linked to the annual appraisal process. It is expected that a school may require an employee to spend up to five days on professional development. This shall be in paid time and with all reasonable costs met by the school.

A useful definition for professional development is that it is something that helps you learn to do a different or more complex task whereas training is anything necessary to keep you up-to-date so you can continue to do your existing job in changed circumstances.

Police vets

The Education Act 1989 requires that schools obtain a police vet before appointing support staff, and then every three years. The vets are requested through the Teachers Council, but any decisions based on the vet must be made by the school.

The vet is obtained by completing the appropriate application form and sending it to the Teachers Council. Copies of the result will be returned to the school and to the individual.

The individual must be given a reasonable opportunity to comment before any decision is made against them on the basis of the vet.

Useful links

The process, the role of the employer, and of the Teachers Council is outlined here

http://www.teacherscouncil.org.nz/pdf/ntpv-information-sheet.pdf

The application on the Council website. Part B must be completed by the designated person at the school which is requesting the vet.

Non Teacher Police Vet Application form TCNPV

Frequently Asked Questions can be found here

http://www.teacherscouncil.org.nz/ntpv/faq.stm

Proper processes
Schools are legally required to have a process in place to deal with these police vets. The process must identify an individual to whom the results of each vet will be sent, and must ensure "strict confidentiality" is maintained. This will need to deal with who opens the envelope containing the vet, who sees the result of the vet, who is informed of the contents of the vet and is involved in any decisions based on those contents, and who disposes of the vet. The more people there are involved in those steps, the less the process will comply with the requirement for "strict" confidentiality.

Degree of risk
The vet may disclose convictions, and may reveal that police have concerns about an individual but for some reason have not taken a prosecution or obtained a conviction. Prospective employees should not automatically be rejected if a vet discloses such information. The key focus should be on the actual degree of risk to students, staff and the school community. There will be many factors to be considered, including the nature, timing and circumstances of the offence, and how the candidate has changed since that time.

Further information

The following websites, from time to time, have additional updates, circulars and advice about support staff employment matters as further changes or clarification is required.
The NZ Education Institute website http://www.nzei.org.nz/
The Ministry of Education website http://www.minedu.govt.nz/
The NZ School Trustees Association http://www.nzsta.org.nz/