Early Childhood Crisis? Liberate the Profession!

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Early Childhood Education

Early Childhood Crisis? Liberate the Profession!

"It's easily fixed," says Libertarianz.Early Childhood Education Spokesman Peter Cresswell, referring to the crisis in early childhood education highlighted in The NZ Herald this morning. "To understand the cause of the crisis is to realise how easy is the remedy," he says.

Cresswell explains, "Over the last twelve years successive governments have done their level best to throw experienced early childhood practitioners out of the profession unless they endure up to four years of a qualification described by industry representatives as 'weighted heavily with academic and not practical requirements, providing little information on infant/toddler age range or on management issues and generally poorly matched to the competencies actually needed by supervising teachers in services.'" This 'forced retraining' scheme, says Cresswell, "has been a disaster for schools, for teachers and for children -- but a boon to Ministry of Education apparatchiks, who have used the bogus mantra of 'qualifications' to achieve complete control over an industry that was once flourishing in diversity, but is now mired in greyness and political correctness, and struggling to find staff."

"The Ministry themselves now predicting a teacher shortage of between 1500 and 2000 teachers next year, and industry insiders are all too aware that this threatens the very survival of their schools," says Cresswell. "It's crystal clear that those 'forced retraining' chickens, released by former education ministers Trevor Mallard and Nick Smith, are now coming home firmly to roost. This is not a genuine shortage, not when professionals eager to work are effectively being locked out."

"New minister Anne Tolley has a simple choice," says Cresswell. "Either pull the teeth of the education apparatchiks who set up this 'forced retraining' disaster, or else accept the unemployment of hundreds of teachers and the ongoing decline of the early childhood industry. Remove the teachers' chains, and the 'shortage' will be cured overnight."

"Let us see if Ms Tolley has the courage to liberate children and the professionals who genuinely love their work," concludes Cresswell, "or whether she is just another minister easily captured by a ministry more concerned with control than with children."

ENDS

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