Meaningful ECE Change Will Take Bold Decisions From The Regulation Ministry

ECE operators and teachers hope the Regulation Ministry finds answers to the over-regulation burden that’s made childcare increasingly unsupportive to work in and unaffordable for families.

2,325 submissions were received: 774 from parents and caregivers, 859 from people working in ECE, 107 from service providers and 61 from other groups with 524 long-form written submissions. This is a massive response and shows a strong level of engagement among the sector, and parents and caregivers wanting the best for their children.

The Early Childhood Council’s verdict through this process is that over-regulation is a lot worse than first realised. ECC’s submission asks simple questions about ECE-specific regulations - are they effective, do they create new problems by conflicting with other regulations and can the burden they place on providers be justified by their outcomes?

“The ECE regulatory framework has been allowed to become dysfunctional to the point of absurdity in so many areas. Standards that aren’t clear or never worked, because they were designed without sector engagement or were a solution in search of a problem, need to go,” said Early Childhood Council CEO Simon Laube.

ECC has made the following key recommendations in their submission:

• ECE providers need more flexibility in how they operate, enabling more innovation to meet parent demand for ECE without having to increase fees. That’s not currently possible under current conditions imposed on childcare hours that aren’t funded by the government. There has to be a limit to the number of educational hours a child receives in a day before the benefits of high quality education start to provide diminishing returns. We can keep our unified education and care system in New Zealand, but parents need more affordable options too, so more children can participate in quality ECE and services can be more efficient
• Existing licence-based regulations should be refined and kept for licensing only, with a new and more streamlined monitoring model for services once they are operating.

“Our current approach is blunt and holding us back. It’s like forcing any person who makes a traffic violation re-sit their learner licence, restricted and full – it’s the wrong approach, when timely and more effective intervention would serve children better,” said Simon Laube

The ECC says the regulatory burden is a major challenge facing the sector, alongside the fundamentally flawed Pay Parity policies where teacher salaries are under-funded by government.

It remains to be seen how the regulation review will affect the range of challenges facing ECE, while details of the funding review remain unclear, nearly a year after the 2023 General Election.

Leaders in the sector are almost too scared to ask for increased funding because we’re told the country can’t afford it, yet we all know the return on this ECE investment would more than justify it. The problems in ECE start with regulation, but fixing them will only go so far with the flawed funding model we have now.”

“We need to sort out the failures in our ECE system for our children, we owe it to them. It’s disgraceful that the current situation means more and more children miss out on a quality ECE experience. It will take time, but we must now fix the difficult problems that have held our sector back for years,” said Simon Laube.

Background

The Early Childhood Council (ECC) has submitted a long submission at nearly 100 pages. ECC is New Zealand’s largest association in the ECE sector, has submitted on behalf of its members.

In successive budget rounds, ECE providers’ funding has not been adjusted at sufficient rates which means the real value of the funding is reducing significantly. This is like a funding cut and the burden is simply put on parents through increased fees.

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