NZEI Te Riu Roa is calling on the Government to acknowledge low paid women by lifting the pay of education support workers and teacher aides to equal that paid to corrections officers.

According to the NZEI, New Zealand women are paid on average 13 per cent less than men, and with 13 per cent of the year to go, women in New Zealand are effectively "working for free”.

NZEI president Louise Green says more than 90 per cent of the support staff working in schools and early childhood education are women.

'The Government can now make pay equity a reality for thousands of women who help Kiwi children learn, by paying them the same as the mostly men who work in New Zealand's prisons," she says.

Corrections officers and Teacher Aides are both level 4 jobs on the Australian and New Zealand Standard job Classification System, yet beginner corrections officers (prior to any training) are paid $3.63 an hour more than the most experienced teacher aides.

"Teacher aides and support workers have waited more than six months for the Government to agree to some basic equal pay principles put forward by a joint equal pay working group.

'It's hard to believe that the Government would make women wait six months to sign off on these principles, if it is really serious about paying women fairly,” says Louise.

NZEI national executive support staff representative Alison Gray was a support staff worker for 35 years and says pay is still too low for teacher aides.

'At the moment when we're talking about employing a support staff person, regardless of gender, there's no discrimination on the pay scale. But it takes approximately seven years for a support staff person employed initially on the lowest rate to reach the current living wage calculation.”

She says support staff and teacher aides who work with children in schools can deal with anything from incontinence of students, mobility issues, autism, and ADHD

'It isn't lifestyle choice, either, for most the teacher aides who come into schools. Some people think it's just rich women coming in to entertain themselves. But the job is not that easy,” says Alison.

'At the school I was involved in there's a woman who's been there for a number of years. She has a real skill working with autistic children – she's able to pick up quickly what their trigger points are. It's something she's built up from her work experience, and which you can only achieve from work experience. But it doesn't appear to be recognised very well.”