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Early Childhood Education (2005) 

 

Labour’s Vision

Labour believes that every New Zealander is entitled to access quality public education of the highest standard, throughout their lives. Quality education ensures that every Kiwi regardless of who they are and where they come from can achieve their full potential and contribute to New Zealand's society and economy.

Early childhood education is the first stepping-stone on the path to lifelong learning. Access to high quality early childhood education that parents can afford, is the firm footing children need to thrive at school and beyond.

 

Labour's Achievements

Labour has already improved the quality of teaching and access to early childhood education by:

  • Increasing government's investment in early childhood education – by 2009, it will have increased 140 percent compared to 1999;
  • Working with the sector to develop Nga Huarahi Arataki, Pathways to the Future: A 10-year strategic plan for ECE.  The plan sets out the shared vision of the sector and the government;
  • Requiring all teacher-led services to have at least one registered and qualified teacher (97% of services have already met this standard, with the others being given dedicated assistance to meet the target);
  • Implementing a higher rate of funding for services that employ more registered teachers.  $546 million has been put aside to fund this between 2005 and 2008 – approximately $245 million (44%) will go to private services and $301 million (56%) will go to community based services;
  • Increasing the number of early childhood teacher trainees to 4,700 – up from 2,653 in 1999.  This has in part been helped by a number of government funded grants and incentives;
  • Taking to 900, the number of bonded scholarships ($43.7 million over four years) for people from low-income backgrounds to train as early childhood teachers;
  • Introducing equity funding for early childhood centres in low-income neighbourhoods, at a value of around $11 million per year;
  • Mapping the network of early childhood services, and identifying 'hot spots' where more services are needed to meet demand;
  • Creating extra places for more than 4,300 thousand children.  Community based early childhood education centres across New Zealand received $64 million to extend, upgrade or develop their buildings;
  • Creating Centres of Innovation – supporting services to carry out research into teaching and learning, and strengthen effective practice in early childhood education;
  • Introduced start-up grants for new community based centres.

 

 

Labour's Priorities for the next term

More Affordable

During our next term in government Labour will:

  • Provide funding for 20 hours free early childhood education for three and four year olds attending any licensed, teacher-led services from July 2007;
  • Review funding arrangements for playcentres to ensure that they are fairly resourced and that the contribution they make to the early childhood education sector is appropriately recognised.

 

More Accessible

During our next term in government Labour will:

  • Work with existing early childhood providers to encourage them to extend services, by either growing their centres (where appropriate) or establishing additional centres on other sites.  We will also engage existing providers to act as mentors for new centre managers;
  • Encourage employers (particularly in the state sector) to establish early childhood education facilities on work sites;
  • Extend and promote the highly successful scholarship scheme for early childhood teacher trainees, so there are sufficient quality teachers to staff the additional services;
  • Promote the benefits of participating in early childhood education to families and whanau with children under three years old;
  • Continue to develop capacity in Pasifika communities to deliver early childhood education in Pasifika languages to foster participation of Pasifika peoples.

 

More Responsive

During our next term in government Labour will:

  • Encourage parental and staff involvement in the governance of community early childhood services, and provide them with good information to guide their input;
  • Support initiatives within the health sector to identify barriers to early learning.
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