May 05, 2023
Pay boost for kohanga reo staff
Associate Māori Education Minister Kelvin Davis says he’s baffled why it’s taken so many years for kohanga reo staff to get paid the same as other early childhood education workers.
A new pay scale will increase the starting rate for full-time kaiako from $44,000 to just over $59,000, and the new top rate is nearly $100,000.
That means an average pay increase of around 35 percent for the 2000 kaiako.
Mr Davis says individual kohanga reo used to set their own staff rates, and he’s been pushing for a universal pay scale since he came into the portfolio.
“That was one of the things I said, like, why can’t we engage with them around a pay scale – like a mechanism to pay, so that they don’t actually have to worry about that sort of stuff? The most important stuff is te reo. It’s been a bit of a mission getting to this stage, but the fact is, we are here and I’m very proud of it,” he says.
Mr Davis says the additional $76 million over five years is part of the Crown’s response to the Waitangi Tribunal’s concern about the financial stability of the kōhanga movement.