What are discretionary hours and how do they work in Juniorlogs?
You may go to Left Menu > Staff Records > Roster
A discretionary hour is an hour that a service can claim the Other Teacher as a Certificated Teacher for the purposes of the Staff Hour Count.
Services that must complete the Staff Hour Count may record the hours worked by relievers who are Other Teachers as Certificated Teacher Hours for the purposes of the Staff Hour Count for up to 40 (60 – effective 1/10/2019 to 31/05/2020) hours during the funding cycle.
Discretionary hours are used to help maintain funding rates, where an appropriately qualified reliever cannot be found to cover certificated teacher absences.
Certificated teacher absences and discretionary hours
Services should maintain a list of certificated relievers who are available when certificated teachers are absent.
The Ministry will accept up to 40 (1 June 2021 until 31 January 2022) discretionary hours per funding period (to maintain current rates of funding) when certificated relievers are not available, provided that the record-keeping requirements described in this section are met.
Services may record the hours worked by relievers who are Other Teachers as Certificated Teacher Hours for the purposes of the Staff Hour Count for 40 hours during the funding cycle. Services may choose which hours these apply to – they do not have to apply to the first 40 hours.
Increase to discretionary hours
Additionally, there is a temporary increase in the number of discretionary hours available to teacher-led centre-based services. This increase will extend discretionary hours from 40 to 80 hours per funding period, effective from 1 June 2021 until 31 January 2022
Record Discretion Hours:
- Check if a duty type “Discretion count” exists within your service. When you double-click on the duty field within the Roster/ Contact Hours page, you should see it listed as one of the duties. If you do not have this added, navigate to Roster Duties under the ListView section and ADD a new duty – you can name it anything but select type “Discretion” – see the screenshot below.
- Once this duty is added, simply go to your Contact Hours recording page and select this newly added duty from the dropdown list of duties. Allocate them as appropriate.
- Go to the MOE menu on the left, then click Discretionary hours report – Generate the Discretionary hours report to get all your discretionary hours listed and simply email them (use Email option on the right) to the Ministry.