Auditor General finds Education Department employees were overpaid $2.5 million FINDINGS: Education Minister Jennifer Rankine said the department was working with Shared Services SA to address the overpayments. EDUCATION Department employees were overpaid $2.5 million, while salary and leave entitlements were not being properly certified, an Auditor General's report found. The report also reveals pay clerks were continuing to process claims, allowances and leave applications without checking whether they had been approved. It also found regular reviews of registered care givers were not done as required under law and the annual review of 207 registered caregivers was overdue at May 31. The lack of proper certification meant people were approving pay and entitlements without being at the right level to do so. Opposition education spokesman David Pisoni said the financial mismanagement was further evidence of process and cultural issues within the Department for Education and Child Development. "At the very least it shows a casual attitude to operational management standards," he said. The worst case scenario is that the department is simply not equipped to do the job that the public should expect it to be able to do. He could not believe regular reviews of registered caregivers had not been occurring as they should, particularly given recent attention to issues of child protection and abuse. "I find it absolutely extraordinary that in the current environment the Minister has allowed a lapse of reviews in this very important area," he said. The report found "the balance of unrecovered salary overpayments recorded ... as at March 2013 was $2.5 million, an increase of $1.21 million (93 per cent) since June 2012." The report also found: Schools failed to maintain warranty logs, which could lead to paying for work which should be under warranty. Schools not validating maintenance work payments, causing maintenance work to be paid for automatically after 30 days, without review and approval. Contracts for emergency care houses not properly reviewed, and $37.1 million in bulk payments were not properly approved by staff with appropriate financial skills. Terminated Families SA employees still had system access after their employment ended.Education Minister Jennifer Rankine said the department was working with Shared Services SA, which manages public service payments, to address the overpayments, while the reviews of caregivers would occur as soon as possible. "I am advised that the department will be ensuring these reviews - which are only recently overdue - are undertaken as soon as possible," she said. Child safety concerns are monitored under a separate process and are investigated continuously. She also said a review into terminated employees having system access despite their employment having ceased was underway and due for completion in December. "The employees did not have access to the building or access to a department IT network," she said. She said Families SA used a different payroll system and was considering the option of certifying on-line leave reports.