A Response To The ECC’s Call For Lower Education Standards

Tuesday, 17 September 2024 

The Early Childhood Council (ECC) is causing anxiety in the early childhood sector as details of its submission to the Ministry for Regulation are emerging. These details include a request by its approximately 900 centre owners or providers to:

• Restrict subsidy amounts paid to centres to a six-hour day because they believe it doesn’t matter if children attending different hours receive sub-standard care and education.
• Drop adult-child ratio rules because they believe it is inefficient to have staff cover for teacher breaks and they can breach minimum ratios without the Ministry of Education finding out.
• Not allow families, staff, and members of the public who alert the Ministry of Education to problems within centres to have anonymity and make protected disclosures.
• Remove kindergartens from the Education Service, which would mean that their collective employment agreement would become null and void.
• Remove funding that’s in place to support progress toward delivering pay parity with kindergarten and school teachers so employers would not be obligated to pay any higher than the minimum adult wage to qualified teachers with a current practising certificate.
• Be supported by government to offer cheap poor-quality care – large numbers of children, less qualified teachers, few adults for child supervision.

The Office of Early Childhood Education (OECE) says anxiety about the ECC’s submission is understandable because the ECC has successfully lobbied Minster Seymour already for reductions in regulations and teacher pay. The ECC is bound by its constitution to promote the interests of privately-owned centres and their owners.

But, the OECE cannot provide a critique of the ECC’s submission because the ECC has not made it available to the sector.

Chief advisor to the OECE, Dr Sarah Alexander said that until the ECC makes its full submission available it’s not possible for the OECE to critique it.

“It falls on the operators of centres in the ECC lobby group, and the teachers employed by them, to speak up if they are not comfortable with what the ECC says they want.”

The OECE has called for regulations and requirements to be strengthened including for ratios, improved support for ECE qualified teachers, and the introduction of regulations for group or class size to reduce overcrowding and improve educational, mental health and physical health outcomes.

The OECE’s submission titled the: “Economics of Early Childhood Education Regulations” can be found online at: https://oece.nz/public/big-issues/death-injury-prevention/economics-early-childhood-education-ece-regulations-review/

“Fund and forget is not an appropriate strategy for NZ’s ECE sector.

“Funding services but leaving the setting and monitoring of standards up to ECE providers whose main focus is maximising revenue will not work for children and families, or benefit the economy” said Dr Alexander.

The OECE submits that regulation is important for all hours that children attend an ECE. Deregulating the ECE sector would place children at significant risk.

A baby farming scandal and crisis over the care of young vulnerable children led to the promulgation of the Child Care Centre Regulations on the 7th November 1960.

“Stripping out regulations and returning to the days of back-yard quality of care will risk children’s safety, success in education, and lives. It will also cost our country millions of dollars more in the end in health, corrections, and economic productivity,” said Dr Alexander.

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