Early childhood teachers back “factory-farming” report

Early childhood teachers back “factory-farming” report

7 October 2015

A report highlighting the growing concern about quality in early childhood education endorses what ECE professionals have been saying for several years.

The Child Forum report released today points to major concerns about teacher-child ratios and says some centres are “mostly crowd management” or like “factory farming for children”.

NZEI Te Riu Roa executive member, Virginia Oakly says this will have a huge impact on long term educational benefits for children. Quality early childhood education is vital for children, particularly those from more challenging or poorer backgrounds.”

She says early childhood teachers are becoming very concerned the effect on children of the reduced ratio of qualified staffing and growing number of big “factory-farming” centres.

“We warned the government when it reduced the ratios for qualified teaching that it would have a big impact on quality.”

“And we’ve continued to tell the government that many kindergartens and community-based early ECE services are struggling to maintain qualified staffing levels against rising costs.

“However it seems the government has been obsessed with getting more children into early childhood education and has been turning a deaf ear to the concerns of professionals.”

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