Cancellation of home-based review - substandard education

Cancellation of home-based review ‘leaves thousands with substandard education and care’

5 July, 2013

The cancellation of the Government’s review of home-based early childhood education, announced this morning, ‘leaves thousands with substandard education and care’, says the Early Childhood Council.

CEO Peter Reynolds said today (05 July) that most home-based workers were unqualified and many were responsible for delivering a national early childhood curriculum they had not even heard of. He called the situation was ‘absurd’.

He said a 2009 ERO monograph had found a third of home-based early childhood services had problems complying with regulations, and the 2011 ECE Taskforce had concluded quality of care in home-based was unacceptably low.

While centre-based early childhood educators had strict rules for the supervision of inexperienced staff and were required to have between 50% and 80% fully-qualified teachers, one qualified home-based teacher could be responsible for 20 unqualified workers in multiple locations and in charge of 80 children.

It was simply not possible to properly supervise junior staff in such circumstances, Mr Reynolds said.

‘An under-qualified, under-supervised junior plumber is not allowed to fix a toilet. Why, I wonder, are we are allowing under-qualified, under-supervised people to nurture and teach our youngest of children?’

There was also, said Mr Reynolds, the question of where the money was really going. It was ‘common knowledge’ in the sector that early childhood education money was funding au pairs doing housework, he said. And this was ‘a highly questionable deployment of precious education money’.

Mr Reynolds said the failure to review home-based early childhood education would see low-income children being taught by cheap, unqualified home-based workers who had never heard of the curriculum they were supposed to be delivering while the rich got Government-subsidised au pairs to wash their dishes.

When Minister Parata announced the review last year she said it was to be ‘in response to recommendations made in reports by the ECE Taskforce and two Sector Advisory Groups which were established to focus on improving the quality of ECE services’.

‘You have to wonder what has changed her mind,’ Mr Reynolds said.

The Early Childhood Council supported the existence of home-based early childhood education as an option for parents, but opposed low-quality early childhood education of any sort.

There should, Mr Reynolds said, be an ‘equivalent regulated quality’ for all New Zealand children whether they attend centre-based or home-based ECE. At the moment there was not. And the cancellation of the home-based review suggested there would be ‘no significant change any time soon’.

The Early Childhood Council is the largest representative body of licensed early childhood centres in New Zealand. It has more than 1000 member centres, about 30% of which are community-owned and about 70% of which are commercially owned. Its membership includes providers of home-based early childhood education.

Quotes from the Government’s ECE Taskforce report of 2011

"The Ministry of Education is encouraging the proliferation of home-based provision as there are very low capital costs associated with this type of early childhood education provision. However, there are concerns that the growth of that part of the sector may detrimentally impact on quality."

"… the Education Review Office (ERO) found in its 2009 monograph on home-based services that it had…concerns about aspects of compliance in a third of services. Concerns related mostly to the inconsistent application of some requirements… and the ineffectiveness of some personnel management practices in bringing about improvement to the performance of coordinators and educators. We find this deeply troubling."

"The submissions relating to home-based services, including those made by providers, called for a review of the licensing regulations and criteria applicable to them."

"The ECE Taskforce recommends that… an evidence-based investigation is conducted into whether the licensing criteria and quality measures associated with home-based services provide sufficient regulation; and that regulation and funding decisions are made based on the results of this investigation."

"Our understanding of the notion of quality leads us to have some concerns about the quality of education and care that can be provided by home-based service providers under current arrangements. While home-based services have some strong quality characteristics, such as small group sizes and low ratios, they do not have a qualified, professional workforce, which we regard to be essential to good outcomes from early childhood education. Instead, up to twenty educators without high-level early childhood education teaching qualifications are supervised by a single qualified teacher in the role of the network’s coordinator."

"In general, home-based services are structured so that a qualified educator supervises a number of unqualified educators, who in turn directly engage with children in their care. One teacher can be responsible for educators in charge of 80 children in total. Despite this, home-based services are funded as teacher led services in the existing funding system. This is unacceptable."

"We note that home-based services… offer the lowest structural indicators of quality through qualification."

ENDS

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