The Early Childhood Education (ECE) Parents Council is worried about the new Ministry for Regulation review of the ECE
sector - following the release of the terms of reference and the statements made by David Seymour to the media.
Parents Council spokesperson Camille Furnandiz says that the regulation review focus looks to be in response to service
provider lobbyist wishes.
“The question is why are ECE providers given so much influence on Ministry committees and consultation on regulations?
“It feels like parents are marginalised, policy-making and consultation processes put provider interests first, and our
children become collateral damage,” says Furnandiz.
From the parent perspective the regulation review is not addressing the actual problem, which is that the Ministry of
Education has never had the resources in the first place to adequately support, monitor, and enforce compliance with
minimum standards in services.
This has meant that services run on a high-trust model. Service providers can get upset when the Ministry of Education
must do a licencing compliance check for reasons such as serious injury to a child or complaints. Service providers can
respond in a defensive and deflective way.
Furnandiz says that Minister Seymour is listening and responding to this noise about regulations being burdensome and
the costs of compliance and not to the needs and expectations of parents for stronger enforcement and increased minimum
standards.
She notes that there is a lack of accountability to parents for the safety and quality of care and education provided by
services.
“The worry is that there will be even less accountability to parents than there is now.
“The ECE Parents Council cannot think of another sector or industry where the users are not consulted for any of the decision making.
“We also don’t know of another sector receiving government funding that seems to have such little accountability to how
that money is used.
“Our babies are precious and we want to feel confident they are in safe hands while we work and study,” says Furnandiz.
Instead of slashing regulations (which include education, health, safety, child protection, food safety, buildings, and
playgrounds) the ECE Parents Council would like to see minimum standards raised and new standards introduced to improve
the quality of education and care for young children (e.g. we feel there is an urgent need to limit the number of
children per class or group and improve teacher-child ratios).
The ECE Parents Council would also like to see the Ministry of Education empowered to investigate parent complaints
about fees and fee charging practices. The lack of transparency around the breakdown of fees and frequent fee increases
are very distressing for a lot of families.
“Private ECE operators base fees on the profit level they desire and on what they think parents will stretch themselves
to pay above the government subsidy so they can work and study to create better opportunities for their families.
“So, if Minster Seymour and the government thinks that fewer regulations will result in cheaper childcare fees, to make
it more affordable for more families, then they don’t understand how business works,” says Furnandiz.
Minister David Seymour states that they will be formally engaging with parents so we look forward to being consulted
before any more decisions are made on regulation requirements in the ECE sector.
The ECE Parents Council will be participating in the national Early Childhood Education Summit on Monday 10 June in
Wellington, and programme details can be found here. Further comment will be available to the media then.
About the My ECE Parents Council.
The Parents Council has more than 800 members. It is a voluntary group advocating for the interests of our children in
ECEs and families. Parents and caregivers can join the Parents’ Council at My ECE.