I’ve had enough and I want my share
Written By:
- Date published:
11:47 am, October 24th, 2010 - 10 comments
Categories: education, wages -
Tags: anne tolley, karen sewell, Tony Ryall
The Secretary for Education Karen Sewell has just had a minimum pay rise of $30,000p.a. Ironically the same 4% that teachers are after. Here is some maths for Mrs Sewell. Her 4% is 30,000 dollars. 4% of a teachers salary of around $65k is $2,600 dollars.
The State Services Commission and their Minister Tony Ryall sat that this is ok because the total spend is down and that increases are an indication of good performance, yet Sewell and the Ministry of Education were rated as one of the poorest performing CEO’s and Departments earlier in the year
Add to this the National Standards debacle and that we have the worst and most divisive Minister of Education in living history then it is just another case of the National mantra – ‘if it’s ok for me then it’s ok’.
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Interesting. Hugh Rennie:
Those who got a pay rise ”more than met expectations.”
From the ratings linked to in the post:
The Education Ministry came bottom of the rankings for overall performance, chief executive performance…
Makes you wonder what their expectations are, exactly. Perhaps helping the govt pick a fight with both teacher unions at once is what they’re expecting of her?
Was Sewell part of those state service contracts that had massive increases locked in, in about 2007 for five years?
There’s no mention of locked-in pay increases in the Stuff story – in fact, it says various of the heads received no increase because their performance didn’t warrant it. It does say Rennie refused to explain why Sewell received an increase though, so maybe there is a rather embarrassing agreement behind it.
This might come as a surprise to some… when discussing teachers’ salaries.
There is a large group of teachers in the Primary sector who graduated before 1990 having completed a Teaching Diploma.
Graduates from the colleges since then have done the same courses but have come out classified as a B.Ed.
The maximum that the Scale A teacher with a diploma can earn is $54,000.
The maximum for the B.Ed is the $65,000 you refer to above.
Currently at least 30 pcnt of New Zealand teachers are diploma teachers (doing exactly the same work by the way and will have done exactly the same professional development in the meantime).
A 4 pcnt increase would be $2160 for them. (not $2,800)
(Apparently there is a growing body within the profession who wouldn’t mind seeing the introduction of some form of performance pay. You may wonder why)
captcha : sharing
“The Secretary for Education Karen Sewell has just had a minimum pay rise of $30,000p.a. Ironically the same 4% that teachers are after. Here is some maths for Mrs Sewell. Her 4% is 30,000 dollars.”
Either there’s a maths fail here or Karen Sewell earns $750,000 per annum.
30,000 / 0.04 = 750,000
Does she really earn $750,000 per annum? I doubt it. If so, that’s an extraordinary salary.
The stuff article says she gets up to $20,000pa more., so maybe she gets about or up to $500,000 pa
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4258966/20K-raise-for-education-boss
and it says that Peter Hughes, head of the Ministry of Social Development, is the highest paid government head, earning up to $579,000. He did not get a pay rise this year
Apparently her salary was raised from the $480,000-$489,999 band to the $500,000-$509,999 band. A raise of between $10,001 and $29,999. In otherwords a maximum of $30,000, not a minimum. Assuming she was at the midpoint, and is now at the new midpoint, that’s raise of $20,000 or 4.12%.
“Peter Hughes, head of the Ministry of Social Development…earning up to $579,000.”
Incredible, given WINZ can’t even deliver proper end of year tax certificates with the correct figures.