Pay Parity - Early Childhood Council Cautioned

The Early Childhood Council (ECC) has called for solutions to pay parity policy.

It wants funding to be increased. It does not support paying ECE teachers at least at the level of pay parity set by the Ministry of Education, which is currently still less than what kindergarten teachers earn. It says that pay parity has caused its members to increase parent fees and close services.

The fundamental issue however is trust, says the Office of Early Childhood Education (OECE).

The ECC promotes the interests of for-profit service owners. In 2021 when the Labour Government announced it would be spending $170 million over four years to give teachers in their first six years of work parity with those in schools and kindergartens. The ECC could not say that the new funding would be passed on to teachers in the form of higher wages and not used for other purposes.

The ECC said in its recent submission to the Ministry for Regulation that it does not agree with publication by the Ministry of Education of ECE services responses to the attestation questions for pay parity funding.

But it is an important mechanism to ensure a service is meeting their obligation to pay teachers at least at the minimum amounts they have agreed to for higher funding. Only by providing clarity on a service’s decision to opt-in, do teachers have the necessary information to discuss this with their employer and what it means for their pay.

Since trust is an issue, funding conditions are necessary.

The Ministry of Education currently requires that certain conditions be met for higher funding to ensure that every early childhood service provider uses the funding they are given as intended.

Dr Sarah Alexander, chief advisor to the OECE said that “leaving service providers to use the funding targeted towards pay parity in any way they want, and not necessarily for teachers’ wages is not a viable solution”.

“If the requirement for salary attestation to determine the funding rate services are paid is removed then the gains made in teacher pay will evaporate. There would be further deterioration of the ECE workforce, and children will be the collateral damage.”

The Office of Early Childhood Education respectfully suggests to the ECC that it review its role in the problems it has described in relation to pay parity policy.

“We would like to see the ECC use its political lobbying skills and money for good, and support solutions to ensure all ECE teachers are paid no less than school teachers.

“The ECC needs to be telling its members not to open new ECE services in areas that are already well served, forcing other services that do not want to compromise on quality to close. Or it needs to tell Minister Seymour that it no longer wants the government to remove network management.

“The ECC also needs to tell its members to make the financial accounts for each of their services publicly available for parents to see for themselves if fee increases are justified,” said Dr Alexander.

Dr Alexander said that the ECC was being foolish not to support kindergarten teacher pay parity. Kindergarten teachers are currently the only group of ECE teachers that have full pay parity with school teachers.

“If kindergarten teachers were to lose pay parity with school teachers then hope of achieving full parity would be gone for teachers working in other parts of the early childhood sector.

“The ECC needs to support pay parity for teachers in Kindergarten Associations who are in the ‘education service’ and argue that the door be opened to other ECE services who might like to be in the ‘education service’ too. This would involve an amendment to the Education and Training Act,” said Dr Alexander.

The OECE recommends that all ECE services be given the right to choose to have the same status as kindergartens as part of the ‘education service’ providing they have charitable status, with a governing body that includes parents, and with a governing document that requires funds to be spent on early childhood education and care.

Additional information

1. The pay parity funding scheme is an optional one for ECE teacher-led centre-based services that are not kindergartens, and is provided by the Ministry of Education (on an opt-in/ opt-out basis).
2. Ministry of Education data shows that in the latest funding round only two education and care centres chose not to claim funding to provide their teachers with any level of pay parity. More than 1,300 centres signed up to funding at the currently specified full pay parity rates and over 900 centres signed up to funding to pay their teachers lesser amounts for pay steps 1 – 11 and the head teacher salary. View: https://oece.nz/public/news-and-views/stories/extended-pay-parity-funding/
3. As a Ministry of Education staffer in 2011, Simon Laube (who is the current ECC CEO) recommended to the National government that it restrict funding for salary cost increases only to Kindergarten Associations. The reason given by the Ministry of Education for separating out kindergartens from non-kindergarten education and care centres was that the government did not trust non-kindergarten service providers to pass on funding meant for salaries. Benefits suggested were that it would “place greater onus on providers to manage and reduce costs” and save $20m per annum in government funding to education and care centres that were not kindergartens.
4. The ECC did not support the 2020 call for centres to have access to the same funding as kindergarten associations. View: https://oece.nz/public/news-and-views/stories/funding-parity/
5. The ECC took legal action against the Ministry and Minister of Education in March 2023, where it alleged Pay Parity breached the right to freedom from discrimination for older female teachers as more experienced teachers had higher rates of pay, and it dropped this action after a funding increase was announced in the May Budget.
6. A Ministry of Education pay parity expert advisory committee had several of the ECC’s own nominees on it.

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