Research Questions Wisdom of Taxpayer Funding

Media Release Sunday May 6 2007
From NZEI Te Riu Roa For Immediate Use

New Early Childhood Education Research Questions Wisdom of Taxpayer Funding of Private Sector, NZEI Te Riu Roa Says

New research on early childhood education in New Zealand reinforces the need for a moratorium on any further public funding of private, for-profit early childhood education services, the union representing early childhood teachers, NZEI Te Riu Roa, says.

A survey published today (Sunday May 6) by the NZ Council for Educational Research has found that teachers in private centres have significantly poorer working conditions, were less likely to be involved in decision-making and were more likely to rate their workload as excessive. The survey also concluded that the market alone was unable to address the problem of uneven access and provision of ECE services.

"We welcome the survey findings that there is widespread support for free ECE for three and four year olds and high levels of parent satisfaction with current services," NZEI Te Riu Roa President Irene Cooper says. "But we endorse the survey's suggestion of a moratorium on spending any further taxpayer dollars on corporate ECE chains that are expected to show a return to investors who are often based outside New Zealand."

She says NZEI wants to see national public provision of early childhood education and care, and had previously questioned the wisdom of the Government's pre-election decision to extend public funding of the free 20 hours ECE for three and four year olds from community-based not-for-profit services to the private sector.
"Increasing subsidies in future to for-profit childcare chains that may put return to the shareholder ahead of investment in sustaining and improving their services is not an acceptable use of public money," she says.

She says the Government's first priority must be to implement the solutions that were already known to work, based on the NZCER study and international research. These included:
• better pay and conditions for teachers, based on nationally consistent collective employment agreements;
• more professional development for teachers;
• improving child:teacher ratios;
• systematic planning of new ECE services to meet community needs; and
• more financial support for parent-led services such as Playcentre and Kohanga Reo.
"This research clearly shows not-for-profit ECE services are better for ECE teachers," Ms Cooper says. "In the long term, this means higher quality learning for our pre-schoolers, because better retention rates for teachers will lead to richer relationships with the children they teach. If we want the best quality education for our pre-schoolers, a system of publicly funded national provision is best."

ENDS

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