Rise in cases of children escaping from ECE care
On average one child escapes a New Zealand early childhood service each week and half of the time it goes unobserved.
Last year 57 children left early childhood premises by climbing fences, opening gates and slipping out as parents entered.
Twenty-nine incidents weren’t observed and the total number of escapes has jumped 60% since 2020, Ministry of Education data released under the official information act shows.
The numbers come weeks after WildHeart ECE – an early childhood education centre in Rolleston – self-reported a toddler exiting its under two-year-old section through a faulty gate. The child then crossed a road.
A parent who wished to remain anonymous said they “felt very worried” by the escape last month and consequently removed their child from the service.
Nobody had realised the toddler was missing until a passer-by returned them to the service, an ex-teacher at WildHeart told The Press.
WildHeart was issued a provisional licence on Monday due to inadequate hazard and risk management, however the Ministry stated this was unrelated to the incident where the toddler got out.
A spokesperson for WildHeart said the escape was “deeply concerning” and faults were “immediately rectified”.
All gates and latches were independently assessed afterwards and the centre offered its sincerest apologies to the toddler’s family, they said.
“The health and safety of the tamariki in our care is of the utmost importance to us.”
The number of early childhood services who held provisional licenses at some point last year had increased 39% to 281 since 2022.
Teachers Advocacy Group founder Susan Jane said when a service is issued a provisional license “there are blatant lapses in health and safety”.
The increase in escapes and provisional licences was “symptomatic of how bad the sector has been getting”, she said.
Jane’s advocacy group fields complaints from 10,000 members who detail the nightmarish reality of teaching in early childhood.
“Conditions are terrible, injuries are high, management is too often poor and there is no protection for teachers in centres they know are bad.”
The sector has been on a decline for years and parents have no idea how their kids are treated, Jane said.
“Children’s accidents aren’t reported – I hear often of pages of accident books that are torn out.”
The current safety regulations bar for running a service was so low any centre operating under the minimum simply wasn’t safe, she said.
Ministry operations and integrations leader Sean Teddy noted with around 4500 services across the country, just 6.6% were at some point below the bar last year.
“More often than not” services on provisional licences comply within the set time frame, he said, and sometimes accidents happen.
“The safety and wellbeing of children is a top priority for anyone working in the early childhood education sector, as it is for the Ministry.”
He said escapes were “very concerning”, but noted over the past three years children leaving unobserved had only increased 10%.
NZEI Te Riu Roa president Mark Potter said “there’s only so many things people can cover and watch” and services were generally struggling with limited resources.
“Many centres are telling us they are finding it very hard to provide the services based on the resources they have.”
A Ministry investigation into WildHeart’s escape is ongoing. As part of a detailed statement sent to The Press, a WildHeart spokesperson said, “WildHeart Early Childhood Education (WildHeart ECE), notified the Ministry of Education in mid-January regarding an incident where a child was able to leave the Centre, unsupervised, through an external fire exit. The child was returned to the Centre safe and well.
“The health and safety of the tamariki in our care is of the utmost importance to us, so this incident was deeply concerning and we are taking it extremely seriously. We have offered our sincere apologies to the family of the child, who remains in our care.
“... The centre was opened in March 2023, and all gates and latches were brand new, despite this, WildHeart has had them all independently assessed.
“... We acknowledge that this has been a difficult time for the child’s whānau, and our staff, as well as our wider learning community ...”