Tiaki allowance (formally dirty work allowance)

Teacher aides who perform tiaki duties will receive fairer remuneration as part of the teacher aide pay equity settlement. Learn more about the changes to the tiaki allowance.

Level of complianceMain audienceOther

Required

  • Principals and Tumuaki
  • Boards
  • Teacher aides

The settlement of the teacher aides’ pay equity claim has introduced new employment conditions for teacher aides. These conditions must be adhered to by schools.

Before settlement

Teacher aides can be required to provide personal care by cleaning up a student soiled with bodily fluids as part of their role, either regularly, or occasionally. 

Currently teacher aides (and other support staff) receive an allowance of $3.85 per incident, to a maximum of once per day for doing this work.

What’s the agreed change?

As part of the pay equity settlement, there will now be two types of tiaki allowance:

  • frequent
  • occasional

A teacher aide can only claim one type of Tiaki allowance, not both.

Frequent

Teacher aides who perform tiaki duties at least once per day on average will receive an extra $2.59 per hour on top of their hourly rate.

These teacher aides will receive this hourly allowance even if on a certain day they do not have to perform this work (e.g. the student is absent from school).

The new hourly allowance is set at 10% of the step 5 pay rate of the Work Matrix B-C scale.

This allowance will increase if the rate of step 5 of the B-C scale increases.

On 27 November 2020 the rate will change to $2.67 per hour.

Occasional

For teacher aides who are required to perform tiaki duties occasionally, the current allowance of $3.85 per incident (up to once per day) will be increased by 25% to the new rate of $4.81 per incident (up to once per day).

They are not able to claim this allowance on days where they do not perform tiaki duties.

This 25% reflects the average increase to teacher aide wages as a result of the pay equity claim.  On 27 November 2020, the rate will increase to $4.95 per day.

Further information about the settlement outcomes

Operational guidelines for schools [PDF, 1.7 MB]

Pay rate calculator

The new pay equity rates

Tiaki allowance

Variation of hours

Professional Learning and Development (PLD)

The Work Matrix

Longer term work

Information for teacher aides

Fact sheets

Quick steps to implementation [PDF, 190 KB] 

Pay equity and the teacher aide claim fact sheet [PDF, 400 KB]

New Work Matrix for teacher aides and pay equity rates fact sheet [PDF, 428 KB]

Tiaki allowance fact sheet [PDF, 307 KB]

Variation of hours fact sheet [PDF, 439 KB]

Professional Learning and Development (PLD) fact sheet [PDF, 364 KB]

Longer term work fact sheet  [PDF, 174 KB]

 

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