Lack Of Strategy For Addressing Long-Standing Early Childhood Workforce Problems Hurts Children’s Education

A plan for building a sustainably supported and qualified early childhood teacher workforce is long overdue, but still nothing is being done.

In May this year, the Early Childhood Advisory Committee (ECAC) provided Minister’s Willis, Stanford, and Seymour each with a copy of a briefing paper on ECE workforce challenges and solutions.

Nicola Willis’s office forwarded her copy of the briefing paper to Minister Seymour because to quote: “the issues raised fall within the portfolio responsibilities of Hon David Seymour, associate Minister of Education”.

ECAC Chair, Bonnie Te Ara Henare said that there had been no response from David Seymour and not from Education Minister Erica Stanford either.

Ms Te Ara Henare said that the government’s main approach to the teacher shortage had been to put funding toward supporting service owners to bring in teachers from overseas and not on supporting kiwi teachers to remain in the New Zealand ECE workforce.

Changes had also been made to regulations and funding to count primary trained teachers as teachers trained for working with under-fives, and centres were no longer required to have an ECE qualified teacher be a person responsible for supervising children and staff.

But such measures have not adequately addressed ECE qualified teacher-supply and retention issues.

“You only have to look at what they are doing over in Victoria, Australia to support the growth of a qualified ECE workforce, to see why kiwi teachers are attracted to work there. They are valued for their qualifications,” said Ms Te Ara Henare.

ECAC recommended that government develop a strategy for building a sustainable, knowledgeable, skilled and ECE qualified workforce. It suggested:

• Reviewing teacher supply initiatives, including the Overseas Teachers Finders’ Fee.
• Valuing the qualification of ECE teaching by ensuring that the qualification recognised for working in ECE settings is one of ECE teaching.
• Ensuring full pay parity for all ECE qualified teachers with school teachers.
• Recruiting men and more Māori Teachers for ECE to better reflect the characteristics of enrolled children.
• Addressing the causes of high staff churn or turnover.
• Improving data collection and reporting.

Ms Te Ara Henare said that the solutions put forward in ECAC’s briefing paper to the Ministers were straightforward and achievable.

“We have expected to see prompt urgent government action. This has not been forthcoming.”

Chief advisor to the Office of ECE, Dr Sarah Alexander said that this was concerning particularly now and in the light of Minister Seymour’s stated intentions to deregulate the early childhood sector.

She said, “there had better be a very high proportion of early childhood qualified and experienced teachers in every centre if the risk that deregulation poses to children is to be managed or mitigated. But there is not. ECE centres can (legally) operate without there being even one ECE qualified teacher present in the centre with children.

“The Ministers need to make sure that they do not worsen the crisis by making workplaces more stressful and less safe for teachers than they already are, and causing teachers to burnout even faster,” said Dr Alexander.

Ms Te Ara Henare added that having enough skilled, knowledgeable, and early childhood education qualified teachers, had been an ongoing issue in the sector for many years.

She called on the government to “please build the quality of the early childhood teaching workforce - not diminish it!”

The Ministerial Briefing Paper on the ECE Teacher Workforce (May 28, 2024), prepared by the Early Childhood Advisory Committee (ECAC) in the OECE can be viewed or downloaded and printed from https://oece.nz/public/evidence/reports/ece-teacher-supply-and-workforce-strategy-recruitment-and-retention/

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