ECE promised boost next year
An increasingly frustrated early childhood sector has been promised more support.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins was handed a petition with more than 8000 signatures in Wellington on Monday from early childhood teachers calling on the Government to fulfil promises it made in opposition to restore funding to higher levels, lower child-to-teacher ratios, and make sure that every early childhood teacher is qualified.
Currently all state-run kindergartens employ only qualified teachers, but community and private facilities do not.
Labour promised to bring in new funding that would only be given to services who employed 100 per cent qualified teachers, but this has not yet happened.
Early childhood teachers are also calling for pay equity between kindergarten and other early childhood teachers, who earn up to 49 per cent less, according to a survey completed by their union.
Hipkins promised the teachers yesterday morning that ‘‘this side of Christmas’’ a 10-year plan for the sector would be released that would make it clear when various funding boosts might happen. But, serious funding boosts will not happen until at least next year’s budget.
Hipkins said the budget would be more focused on early childhood than other parts of education.
‘‘Parts of the system that have had quite a lot of money flow to them recently will see next year is early childhood’s turn,’’ Hipkins said.
‘‘In early childhood education the message from the Government is that that is the area where we acknowledge we have made the least progress so far.
‘‘There’s always going to be constraints. The Government doesn’t have an unlimited pool of money to draw from.’’
The Government had ‘‘topped up’’ early childhood funding but had not fixed ‘‘the legacy of 10 years of underfunding,’’ he said.
While National raised total early childhood education funding from roughly $1 billion to $1.8b in Government, Labour point to a much slower increase in real terms, with the amount paid out per hour of care only rising from $7.05 to $8.19 over the term of its Government. This compared to a raise from $3.19 in 2001 to $7.05 in 2008.
Early childhood teacher Kristen Stevenson said the sector was frustrated at a lack of action in the ‘‘year of delivery".
‘‘You don’t have much time to deliver if this was our year of delivery,’’ Stevenson said.
She was pleased the 10-year strategic plan would come out ahead of Christmas.
Stevenson was keen to see the ratio of students to teachers change from one to five for under two-yearolds to one to three.
Polling commissioned by the union suggested a large majority of New Zealanders supported more funding for early childhood services and wanted it prioritised.