Teacher employment agreements negotiated by the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA) contain teacher appointment provisions.
Secondary Teachers' Collective Agreement (STCA) section 3.2
Area School Teachers' Collective Agreement (ASTCA) section 2.2
A considerable number of the queries that PPTA field officers receive relate to appointments. The most common disputes relate to tenure, hours of work, length of appointment, and job description.
Field officers can assist members to get their appointments properly documented and recorded at the start of their tenure.
Get it in writing from the outset
Too often the requirements in the collective agreement, as to what matters relating to employment must be put in writing, are ignored.
Teachers should ask for job offers, job descriptions, hours of work, length of employment and tenure to be confirmed in writing. Subsequent promotions, or significant changes of job description, should also be recorded in writing.
Most positions must be advertised in the Education Gazette
STCA 3.2.2 Advertising and Appointment describes the vacant positions that must be advertised in the Education Gazette
Part-time teachers must have their hours confirmed in writing on appointment
Agreed changes to permanent hours must be confirmed in writing, as must changes to nonpermanent hours of four weeks or more.
Written advice relating to part-time hours should indicate clearly whether there is any payment for non-contact time and whether the hours being offered are exclusive or inclusive of such non-contact time.
Dispute over employment status 0.5 or 0.8 permanent part time (Case one)
Joanna returned to her school after 18 months’ leave. At the time she returned to work there was a dispute over her employment status. The school claimed that she was 0.5 permanent part-time. Joanna claimed that she was 0.8 permanent part-time. Neither the school nor Joanna could provide any documents to support their claim.
The field officer tracked down the original advertisement in the Education Gazette and also obtained evidence from payroll which indicated that in the returns the school had made to payroll prior to Joanna’s leave the school had coded her as 0.8 permanent part-time. The school therefore agreed to increase her hours.
There must be a genuine reason for a position being fixed term
Fixed term teachers should have a letter of appointment setting out their terms of appointment. The letter must indicate a genuine reason based on reasonable grounds for specifying why the employment will end.
The employee must understand and agree to the reason why the appointment should end at a particular time or at the end of an event or project. This agreement should be put in writing.
Fixed term appointments - Tenure (ERA s66)
Fixed term unit status (Case two)
John was advised by his principal that one of his units was fixed-term and that this fixed-term status was about to come to an end. John produced correspondence between him and the previous principal at the time the unit was given in which an offer of an extra unit was made and accepted. The principal’s letter made no mention that the unit was fixed-term. In John’s letter of acceptance he made mention that the unit was permanent.
With the assistance of the field officer, the current principal came to accept that the unit in question was a permanent one.
Case published in PPTA News October 2009, p. 14
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