Don’t look now
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. Growing crisis in ECE
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
gets government approval. ‘‘I think there should be feasibility studies before another one opens up, because it is a threat to services losing their children to newer, flasher, more modernlooking centres and the community-based ones are living on the smell of an oily rag.’’
Although the MoE advises prospective ECE centres to carry out a community needs assessment, it is not mandatory and, with no formal restriction, the number across New Zealand has steadily increased.
As of January 21, there were 4686 early learning services, compared with 3488 in 2002.
And Viv Shearsby – a Canterbury-based education consultant who has worked in ECE for 30 years – says the sector has become oversaturated.
‘‘There’s no management of the demographics. There are currently more early childhood services licensed in central Christchurch than there were before the earthquakes.
‘‘The idea the Government has is that the market will prevail. Good centres will thrive and bad centres will close, but it doesn’t work like that, because every family is looking for something different and every family finds that somewhere.
‘‘So all of these services are running at half to three-quarters full, because that’s all the kids there are.’’
Sarah Alexander is a senior researcher and CEO at Childforum, a national body founded in 1988 to develop an evidencebased approach to ECE. She says there has been ‘‘an overconstruction of early childhood centres’’ and an ‘‘over-expansion in the number of child places’’.
‘‘From July 2007, 20 hours’ free ECE was brought in for all pre-schoolers. ECE became recognised as an industry that was profitable for anyone to get into and set up a service. The market expanded rapidly.
‘‘Competition for child enrolments is getting fierce, and we are seeing more services dip into their financial reserves and ask teachers to accept not getting a pay rise to subsidise the costs of offering ‘special deals’ to families.
‘‘Every new service provider should be asked to prove that they have the resources in place, namely qualified early childhood teachers, before they build a new centre or are granted a licence change to increase the number of children.’’
Quality control
An annual census of ECE places is carried out by the MoE and, according to the latest data, 217,647 children were enrolled in services in 2019.
Peter Reynolds, CEO of the Early Childhood Council, the largest early childhood employers’ organisation – says he is opposed to state restrictions on the number of centres, but services should be inspected to ensure quality.
‘‘Each service is required to meet around 300 compliances every minute of every day. Should there be inspections and spot checks? Most people in our sector would welcome that.
‘‘There are some excellent [centres] and there are some that have fallen below the standard that we would expect.’’
He says some operators struggle financially, with owners not taking a wage, and there needs to be ‘‘a big reinvestment after a decade of underfunding’’.
‘‘Up until 2011 there was an extra allowance given to childcare centres that made a certain level of parity. Minister [Anne] Tolley stopped that and, in that time, there have been four [pay] increases for kindergarten teachers that created a huge disparity.’’
Ten-year plan
In December 2019, the Government launched its 10-year early learning action plan to improve the sector. It includes incentivising for 100 per cent and regulating for 80 per cent qualified teachers in teacher-led centres; improving the consistency and levels of salaries and conditions; and developing a teacher supply strategy.
Katrina Casey, the ministry’s deputy secretary for sector enablement and support, says high-quality ECE services play a vital part in supporting parents and wha¯ nau. ‘‘We are now working with the early learning sector, parents and wha¯ nau, hapu¯ , iwi, communities and agencies to implement the plan over the next 10 years.’’
The proposal also aims to reduce adult-to-child ratios for children under 2, from one-tofive to one-to-four.
Jacinta McInerney welcomes the changes, but says Karanga Mai already operates a ratio of one adult to three children.
‘‘We don’t work to [the ministry] ratio because we don’t believe it’s quality,’’ she says.
‘‘The ministry says [we] don’t have to, but if I change the ratio our wha¯ nau wouldn’t come because they wouldn’t bring their six-week-old baby to be one of five being looked after by one kaiako [teacher].’’
Experts across the sector say the public perception of ECE also has to change.
‘‘I get annoyed when people see it as babysitting because it’s not, it’s supporting that child to thrive,’’ McInerney says.
Viv Shearsby agrees. ‘‘Early childhood education isn’t really viewed by society as education, more like nice ladies who like children, and anybody can do that.
‘‘But we know that not anybody can do it, and not anybody should do it.’’