Early Childhood Education Reaction To Budget 2023

Children are our future but Budget 2023 does not go far enough to ensure today’s 181,000 children in early childhood education (ECE) will all experience at least a minimum standard of education and care, says chief advisor Dr Sarah Alexander.

“Extending the 20 Hours ECE subsidy to two-year-olds is welcomed. However, the Labour Government has yet to deliver on its promise to make 20 Hours ECE free for three- and 4-year-olds. It will be interesting to see what conditions are set to make it ‘free’. Parents can still pay as much as $80 or more a week in ‘optional” or top-up charges and by service enrolment policies requiring parents to enrol in additional non-20 hour funded hours.

“Funding for ECE teacher pay parity was expected and is necessary.

“A cost adjustment to funding rates is always necessary but there are pressing issues concerning the direction that government is taking ECE that are not being addressed,” says Dr Alexander

The pre-Budget survey conducted by the Office of Early Childhood Education (OECE) showed that while the Labour Government had expressed many policy aspirations, government was perceived to be taking things in the wrong direction for ECE.

“The early childhood sector wants government to improve teacher-child ratios and reduce class or group sizes. It needs government to fund and implement changes to improve workforce retention and raise the proportion of teaching staff who have specialised early childhood training and qualification”, says Dr Alexander.

“Alongside that ECE needs government to resource the Ministry of Education to do unannounced regular inspections of services. Without this we’ll see more services failing to support parents/caregivers well and keep children safe, happy, and learning in quality educational environments.

“Conditions in ECE need to be improved to build and maintain parent confidence in using ECE. The number of children attending ECE was down 7% last year compared with the year before, and has been reducing every year since 2017 when more than 202,000 attended,” says Dr Alexander.

The results of the pre-Budget ECE Sector Confidence survey can be viewed here: https://oece.nz/public/evidence/reports/early-childhood-sector-confidence-survey-2023/

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