Kindy fees hiked while teaching cut
Early childhood education suffers from funding shortfall, writes Laura Dooney.
QUALIFIED early childhood teachers are taking pay cuts to keep their childcare centres open amid a mounting funding crisis.
Despite a government policy of 20 hours’ free early childhood education, there are few parents who can get it. Instead, one in six centres say they have cut staff pay, while asking them to continue juggling the same workload.
Parents say they are concerned about the quality of teaching and the conditions teachers are working under.
But this weekend, Education Minister Hekia Parata insisted childcare had become a third more affordable over the past 10 years.
A survey carried out by the New Zealand Educational Institute shows 89 per cent of services have experienced a shortfall in government funding in the past five years.
Of the 264 centres that responded, 70 per cent had increased parent fees as a direct result of that shortfall, and 41 per cent said they’d cut qualified staff for cheaper, unqualified staff.
Sixteen per cent had cut staff pay rates, or were planning to, and 48 per cent of respondents said curriculum delivery was not happening at the full level.
At Johnsonville West, four fully qualified kindergarten teachers had agreed to have their hours cut from fulltime to 0.85 as IAIN MCGREGOR / FAIRFAXNZ part of a restructure under the umbrella organisation Wellington Kindergartens, head teacher Jo Young said.
But the workload had not changed.
‘‘They do fulltime work,’’ Young said. ‘‘We want to provide high-quality education, and make sure there’s consistency. Teachers have worked overtime to make sure there’s no cracks.’’
The kindergarten also had to fundraise ‘‘for everything’’.
Early Childhood Council chief executive Peter Reynolds said all ECE services were suffering due to a lack in funding, but he didn’t believe that as many as NZEI was suggesting had dropped the quality of their staff.
Across New Zealand’s 2500 licensed childcare centres the vast majority had 80 per cent qualified staff, Reynolds said.
Parata said there were 25,500 staff working in early childhood services across the country, around 74.6 per cent of whom were qualified, an increase from 61 per cent in 2008. Funding for ECE had more than doubled since 2007/2008, and per-child funding in New Zealand was among the highest in the OECD.
‘‘Our Government is absolutely committed to our youngest New Zealanders getting the best possible start to their education by participating in ECE. We are backing up that commitment by more than doubling funding for ECE, making it more affordable for parents and setting ambitious targets for participation.’’
Parata said ECE was 33.1 per cent more affordable now for parents and families than in June 2007.