27 April 2005

Kidicorp Position Themselves as Enemies of Freedom

“Kidicorp have pinned their colours to the mast and deserve to be exposed for the acquiescing selfservers that they are,” says Peter Osborne, Libertarianz Spokesman to Deregulate Education today.

Mr Osborne is responding to an advertisement masquerading as a press release from Wayne Wright, Kidicorp’s Executive Director. In the advertisement, titled ‘Kidicorp geared for growth’, Mr Wright claims that ‘Negative sentiments expressed by some owners of early childhood education centres regarding increased administrative workloads to meet the new Ministry of Education funding system are misleading.’ “Not half as misleading as Wright’s press release,” responds Osborne.

“In the last two years there have been more early childhood centre closures than ever before,” says Osborne. “This is a direct result of the administrative burden that the Ministry has placed on these centres. The latest funding criteria have only compounded problems further. It is always the small operators that feel this burden the most as they find themselves spending more time fulfilling the state’s edicts than concentrating on the things they actually have a passion for, namely teaching. But being the largest early childhood provider in the country, I suppose that the current scenario suits Kidicorp nicely, as one-by-one the competition will drop away.”

“Such is the way with regulation: the large operators get larger, while the smaller ones go to the wall under a flood of paperwork.” Osborne wonders if Kidicorp will find itself immune to Nanny’s agenda when they are among the only private operators left standing.

“Frankly I find this whole-hearted and enthusiastic embracing of state interference to be incredibly smug and disingenuous,” Osborne says. “The general tone of Kidicorp’s release makes me wonder if the ministry divvies out its ill gotten loot more freely to those who fall into line. Going by Mr Wright’s press release he seems almost ecstatic to receive such interference.”

“This is a classic example of why the state and education must be separated. Early childcare centres are dropping like flies for all the wrong reasons. It is not because of incompetence or mismanagement but because they are being lumbered with an ever-increasing compliance burden. If our current model is able to continue, parents will be left with no options for their child’s first learning experience. With a monopoly there is no option, especially when the Labour Government makes early childhood education compulsory.”

Mr Osborne concludes, “Libertarianz will free the education sector in its entirety. The state will no longer have the power to engineer things to suit their own agenda. This will leave schools to operate effectively without unnecessary burdens from the state and no organisation will be able to use state coercion to gain an advantage over other providers.

ENDS

© Scoop Media