How to decide what’s best
Private centre, home-based care, Playcentre, kindergarten . . . the world of early childhood education is a complex and often expensive minefield. With most mums and dads in paid work by choice or necessity, the number of preschoolers in care and education facilities is higher than ever. So what should you be looking for as a parent? Education reporter Simon Collins looks for answers in the final of our six-part series
Keryn Grogan tried every kind of childcare for her two children, but realised in the end that it came down to love. Her son Xavier, now 7, stayed at a Playcentre until he started school because Grogan worked only part-time and was able to spend time at the Playcentre with him.
For a while she took in other children, too, as a home-based educator.
But when daughter Alice, now 5, was 16 months old, Grogan started work outside the home and placed Alice with another home-based educator.
When the family moved to another suburb, she tried a private daycare centre briefly, but felt home-based care was better because Alice could form a secure bond with one adult.
Then, when she was 3½, Alice moved into a kindergarten.
“I was working more, and I didn’t feel that I could give the same commitment to Playcentre,” Grogan says.
The kindergarten opened only from 8.30am to 2.30pm, but Grogan and her husband made it work.
“My husband would start work really early, like 6am. I’d get them off to school and kindy, and he would come back and pick her up from kindy and pick up our son from school. We are still doing that now.”
These varied experiences changed Grogan’s views of what matters.
“When I had my first, one of my opening questions was, ‘What do you do to get kids ready for school?”’ she says.
“But my philosophy developed, and as I saw my oldest one go to school, I kind of moved away from the whole school-readiness thing.
“Most parents are concerned about that, but now I think, let’s give them as much time to play as possible, because once they started school they picked up reading and writing really quickly.
“I think a lot of people think about the practical things — nappies, food, how close is it to home, the physical environment, teacher turnover,” she says.
“The main thing I was thinking about is: Does my child feel safe here, does my child feel secure here, does my child feel at home and comfortable and loved?”
WHAT MATTERS MOST
It’s not that “the practical things” don’t matter. This series has provided a map to help parents choose childcare close to home or work, and has examined “red flags” in the physical environment such as being on polluted main roads or having no natural area for children to experience nature.
Helen May, an emeritus professor at the University of Otago who has spent a lifetime in early childhood education (ECE), says that when her own daughter asked for advice on choosing childcare she gave her “a long list”.
“She said, ‘I can’t look for all of that’,” May recalls.
More recently, her daughter’s sister-in-law asked her the same question. This time, May acknowledged “constraints” such as suitable hours and affordable fees, but advised that the most important thing was the people who would be looking after the child.
“The first thing I always say is look at the quality of the teachers. What is the percentage who are qualified? I wouldn’t go for anything less than 80 per cent,” she says.
“I look through the shiny toys, they are not important. Look at the relationships: To what extent are those children getting talked to? Are the teachers listening to those children, even if the children can’t speak? Do the teachers know the children?”
Nick Batley, head teacher at the community-owned Glenfield Early Learning Centre, is also a father of three young boys and is looking for childcare for his 1-year-old because his wife is going back to work.
“The first thing is, how do you feel when you walk in the door? Are the staff friendly? Is the manager helpful?” he says.
“Parents have to go in and ask questions: If the children are sleeping, where do they sleep? What are they eating? Do they have to bring their own food? What do they learn during the day? This is all agedependent, if it’s a baby it’s more of a care routine.”
He says in an article for this series that ECE teachers are “exiting the sector and sometimes the country” because pay rates in private and community-owned centres have fallen behind new pay scales for kindergartens.
CLAIM CHECK
At face value, it’s hard to differentiate between centres based on qualified teachers because 96 per cent of “education and care centres”, as well as virtually all kindergartens, can now say they get the top “80 per cent” state funding rate for using qualified teachers to deliver at least 80 per cent of their required staff hours for their numbers of children.
But this measure has now become meaningless, because almost all centres can also say their staff/child ratios are better than the required minimums of 1:5 under age 2 and 1:10 aged 2-plus.
The actual average ratios for the past five years have been 1:3 under 2 and 1:6 aged 2-plus in education and care centres, and 1:7.5 aged 2-plus in kindergartens.
But most of the extra staff above the required minimums are unqualified, and there has actually been a huge rise in unqualified staff since Sir John Key’s Government abolished a higher funding rate for using qualified teachers to deliver 100 per cent of the required staff hours from February
2011, redirecting funding into boosting ECE in low-income areas. We can only rely on the figures since 2014, when electronic data began, but in the five years from
2014 to 2019 unqualified teachers jumped by 60 per cent, from
6427 to 10,298. Qualified teachers also rose, but only by 15 per cent, from 18,857 to 21,767. The proportions of qualified teachers slipped from 95 to 94 per cent in kindies, and from 70 per cent to 63 per cent in education and care centres.
DOES IT MATTER?
Parent-led early childhood services such as Playcentre and ko¯hanga reo argue that there is no need for all early childhood teachers to be qualified.
Dr Suzanne Manning, who completed a doctorate last year on the impact of state policies on Playcentres, suggests requiring 80 per cent qualified teachers and 20 per cent “parents in training” and student teachers in education and care centres and kindergartens.
“I believe in the value of wha¯nau working alongside teachers in early childhood settings, and what that does for wha¯nau development and children way beyond early childhood,” she says. “Parents who get to know other people’s children will be better parents.”
But Dr Sarah Alexander of Child Forum, who wrote the Ministry of Education’s “best evidence synthesis” on quality ECE teaching in 2003, argues that only qualified teachers should be counted to meet the minimum staffing ratios, and unqualified parents or trainees should be allowed only as additional staff.
“If it’s an education and care service where you leave your child with other adults and parents are not involved in any substantial way as teachers, then those adults should have training in teaching and in early child development to be able to foster that child’s learning and provide appropriate experiences for children,” she says.
“Research has shown that where they don’t have a high level of training, they can be more controlling.”