Why are we waiting?
In a pre-budget 2020 announcement on May 11, early childhood teachers were told the sector would be given $151.1 million to improve pay.
On Budget day, a further $278.2m was given to the sector.
But while the country congratulated them on a pay rise, the sector says it is simply throwing money at a broken funding system that favours kindergartens over other forms of early childhood education.
Early childhood teachers in New Zealand have the same qualifications, registration requirements and responsibilities as their kindergarten counterparts.
But according to the Early Childhood Council, when it comes to government funding, the former are being given 12 per cent less.
In 2021 that deficit is expected to increase to more than 16 per cent.
Childforum chief executive Dr Sarah Alexander says that, when she joined the sector, there was a clear difference between the role of kindergartens and the role of daycares and cre` ches. The former were run by the thendepartment of Education, and the latter by the Department of Social Welfare.
‘‘When I worked in a cre` che in the private sector, people weren’t called teachers, and I’d get little or no pay, because there was no wage protection.
‘‘You were really just working out of the goodness of your heart.’’
The role of cre` ches and daycares was care-based, whereas kindergartens were for early childhood education, staffed by qualified teachers.
That changed in the mid1980s. ‘‘Care and education started to come together.’’
The first change was moving the responsibility for daycare to the Department of Education in 1986. ‘‘If you wanted to work in a daycare or in a kindergarten, you would do the same training.’’
That training was bumped up from two years to three, bringing it in line with primary school teachers.
The ducks were all in a row for pay parity with primary teachers, bar one aspect: perception.
‘‘It was still perceived that . . . you didn’t need as great a skill for teaching younger children as older children,’’ Alexander says.
In 2001, under education minister Trevor Mallard, a working group was formed to plan kindergarten pay parity