PPTA News November 2008 p.5  

From 1 April 2009 an amendment to the Employment Relations Act will kick in that creates minimum rest and meal breaks for all employees. Schools will be required to provide all teachers with set breaks during the school day.

PPTA has produced a detailed booklet Changes to the Employment Relations Act, to help guide schools and teachers through the change. It sets out the new entitlements and employer requirements and can be downloaded from the collective agreements document library.

PPTA president Robin Duff said while the changes to the act applied to all professions, there were potential implications for schools to manage the legal requirements.

The important thing was for everyone to work together to make them work in schools while still meeting the requirements of the law, he said.

“It needs to be carefully worked through in individual schools. This is what PPTA’s advice is about – making sure that there is sensible discussion about when the breaks will occur. “We are sure though that with calm and sensible deliberation over this term, there will be a variety of solutions generated by schools which will balance their responsibility to meet the requirements of the law and the effi cient operation of the school. There’s no need for there to be a problem, provided people sit down around the table and talk about what would be fair, practical and reasonable.

“We should applaud the intent of the law. People deserve breaks when they work at stressful activities and there is no denying teaching is a stressful activity,” he said.

Robin said it was important that schools got on to thinking about how they would operate the new legal requirement immediately. Although it did not take effect until 1 April, it would be disruptive for schools to start the year with one timetable and then switch over in April.

The scheduled breaks needed to be separate from a teacher’s non-contact time, Robin said.

“Principals are doing their teachers a disservice if they are suggesting this is ‘free time’. Timetable non-contact is time when teachers are working on many other duties. Suggesting that the only work teachers do when they are at school occurs when they are face to face with students is silly. There is a huge amount of administration and preparation, pastoral and other work teachers have to do during the day,” he said.

In anticipation of the law change PPTA raised the matter of formalising a half-hour meal break in the STCA (Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement) during negotiations last year. The NZSTA (New Zealand School Trustees Association)/ministry response was to reject discussion with the “witty” comment ‘teachers will be wanting tea breaks next!’ “Had STA the foresight to grasp the opportunity, schools would have had 12 months more to work through the practical issues. Now we are all faced with a very short time frame indeed,” Robin said.

Download PPTA News November 2008 (pdf 612 KB)