Don’t look now Growing crisis in ECE
Could you look after five babies at once? Preschool teachers have one of the toughest jobs in education, but some feel underpaid and undervalued. Kee Kenny reports.
Preschool teachers are pulling pints, cutting hair and nannying to make ends meet, while one early education centre is under such financial pressure that staff are selling homemade jam to help buy equipment.
New Zealand’s early childhood education (ECE) sector faces several longstanding challenges, including low wages, staff shortages, an over-reliance on non-qualified workers and, more recently, an oversupply of ECE providers.
The sector is complex, and successive governments have tried to get on top of the issues confronting it.
More than 4600 companies, corporations and not-for-profit organisations currently offer ECE services across New Zealand, but despite being government-funded they operate independently of the Ministry of Education (MoE), leading to variations in service, pay and working conditions.
ECE funding was frozen in 2008. Since then, kindergarten teachers have secured a separate collective agreement with the ministry, and received additional pay increases, while ECE teachers have not.
One teacher, who asked not to be named, studied for three years to obtain her ECE diploma and has seven years’ experience but says she is now considering leaving the profession.
She works for a privately operated preschool in Marlborough, and says the low pay and cuts to her hours mean she has to do bar work to pay the bills. ‘‘I was originally contracted to work 35 to 40 hours a week, but that’s been cut to 30.
‘‘I couldn’t live on that, so I started work at a bar. I earn $22 an hour as a teacher and $20 an hour in the bar. I love my job, but I’ve thought about just doing the bar work fulltime.’’
Hers is not an isolated case. A recent survey by the NZEI union, which covers preschool staff, found many are thinking of leaving, with one Palmerston North teacher saying she almost wants to ‘‘chuck it all in’’. ‘‘Stocking shelves in a supermarket is a lot less stressful and almost pays the same.’’
More unqualified staff
Virginia Oakly, head of Nelson Tasman Kindergartens and the ECE representative to NZEI, says the sector faces a deep and growing crisis, with a 55 per cent drop in domestic students training to be ECE teachers between 2010 and 2018.
‘‘The number of unqualified teachers in centres has increased by 60 per cent since 2014, while the number of qualified teachers has increased by only 15 per cent,’’ she says.
NZEI estimates show the pay gap between early childhood teachers and kindergarten teachers is at least 23 per cent.
‘‘Low pay for qualified ECE teachers has been compounded by the funding freeze instituted by the National Government from 2008 to 2017. The shortage of teachers is forcing centres to hire more unqualified staff, and underfunding is driving some centres to closure.’’
Pay disparity
Salary issues have plagued the ECE sector for decades.
In December 1989, Jacinta McInerney was one of 50 childcare workers who took to the streets of Christchurch calling for a pay increase to bring salaries in line with kindergarten wages.
She is now team leader at Karanga Mai Early Learning
Centre – a free ECE service in Kaiapoi – and says more than 30 years later the issue remains. ‘‘I’d say we’ve been in a financial crisis for the last 10 years. We haven’t had a decent funding increase for the last 11 years.’’
Despite receiving the Education Focus Prize at the Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards in 2016, the centre still struggles for operating cash. Staff have raised $30,000 selling jam at markets to enable them to buy bikes and shade-sails. ‘‘We are free because our philosophy is around empowering everyone to have access,’’ McInerney says. ‘‘We also provide transport, to pick up children who wouldn’t be able to get to an early learning service without that.’’
Too many providers?
There is currently no requirement to prove there is a demand for a new service within a community, but McInerney says there should be a ‘‘proven need’’ before a new preschool