Early childhood centres support funding boost

Early childhood centres support funding boost for low-income children

19 August, 2010 For immediate release

The Early Childhood Council (ECC) has praised today’s Government announcement that Waitakere and Northland will be the first two areas to benefit from a nationwide programme to boost the participation of low-income children in early childhood education.

ECC CEO Peter Reynolds said too many of New Zealand’s most disadvantaged children were missing out on early childhood education and the ECC strongly supported the Government’s efforts to make it available to them.

Children missing out were disproportionately Maori and Pasifika, he said. And the ECC’s position was based on both a desire for social justice and the view that New Zealand’s ethnic make up would alter substantially over the coming decades.

There was, as a result of this change in ethnic mix, ‘a substantial future risk of increases in the number of children leaving school with no qualifications’.

‘That is why the ECC strongly supports a targeted investment in early childhood education that addresses this risk by ensuring that the most disadvantaged of children turned up to school ready to learn.’

Previous government policy had, for many years, paid lip service to the idea of increasing participation for low-income children, Mr Reynolds said. But insufficient resources had been targeted at a group of children, at the bottom of the social heap, ‘who all too frequently get little or nothing in the way of opportunity’.

The Early Childhood Council is the largest representative body of licensed early childhood centres in New Zealand. Its 1100 member centres are both community-owned and commercially owned, employ more than 7000 staff, and care for more than 50,000 children.
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