Industry standards would boost quality in ECE

18th October 2011

Industry standards would boost quality in early childhood education

The introduction of industry standards would help deliver consistency and quality in early childhood education, according to the education sector union NZEI Te Riu Roa.

The Labour Party has released its work and wages policy which would see the establishment of industry-specific minimum wages.

The early childhood sector is an area where there can be big differences in teachers’ wages and conditions, depending on what type of service they work in.

NZEI National Secretary Paul Goulter says that can have a big impact on the quality of teaching and learning.

“The bottomline is you can’t get good quality teaching on minimum wages and quality education cannot be delivered in an environment where staff are poorly paid, stressed and overworked”.

“Having a collective industry standard across all early childhood services which would set out agreed minimum standards and professional salaries would not only benefit staff, but would flow on to boost the quality of education for children and families. We already see that in those services where there is a strong collective agreement in place”.

The government itself said last week it wants to move to end the variability in quality in early childhood services.

“Having industry-wide standards in early childhood would be a clear way to achieve that,” says Mr Goulter.

“What we wouldn’t want to see is the government adopting a recommendation from the Early Childhood Education Taskforce for a market-driven model for teacher pay”.

“There is clear evidence that market-driven models in early childhood education don’t work as they drive down teacher pay and conditions, which in turn affects the quality of care and education for children,” he says.

NZEI also welcomes Labour’s plan to lift the minimum wage and to repeal the 90-Day legislation for new workers.

ENDS

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