Teachers are hoping long delays in getting the right rate of pay are over.

Some were underpaid by thousands of dollars while they waited for Education Payroll's salary assessment unit to process their applications.

The Education Ministry told RNZ problems that affected salary assessments earlier this year are over and all correct applications are now being completed within the target of 15 working days.

Experienced primary school teacher Bex Betteridge says when she started teaching in New Zealand again in March after years in Australia, it took months to get the correct pay rate.

"I was put back to an unqualified teacher. I have a beginning teacher working next to me this year and I was earning less than he was," she says.

"It was like 16 weeks all up. I was earning half of what I should be earning and I have a mortgage and three kids and that kind of thing. I couldn't tolerate it any more."

The ministry says applications for salary assessment are reviewed within 15 working days and if more information is required, the school and teacher are contacted within two days.

Betteridge says it took nine weeks before the salary assessment unit responded to her initial request and asked for more information.

She says it's impossible to directly contact the unit to explain the parts of her application they did not understand, such as which Australian schools she worked at and for how long.

"I just felt really powerless. There was no way of me being able to talk to an actual person to say what do I need to do to speed this up or what is going wrong here. You send an email and it's crickets. There's no-one to communicate with."

The ministry says increased applications, staff turnover and Covid-shortages caused delays between the start of March and end of June.

It says during that period, correct applications were processed within a month on average.

Teacher Caleb Webb says he has waited nearly three months, even though there were no problems with his application, for a salary increase based on his routine annual step up the salary scale.

"Usually by the next pay you have your increase sorted and things go as usual. However, this year it's taken more than two months and I've still been waiting up until recently on Friday I got told that they'll finally put the pay through and I'll get the correct pay next week."

Webb says it has been a minor irritant, but he knew teachers who have come from overseas who have been significantly underpaid for months.

The ministry says so far this year, 58 per cent of correct applications have been processed within 15 working days.

-RNZ/John Gerritsen.