Karen O'Leary stars in new early childhood fair pay campaign video

3 December 2019

NZEI Te Riu Roa has launched a new video campaign to get the public behind fixing the huge pay gap between qualified early childhood teachers and other teachers. The video features Karen O'Leary, early childhood teacher and star of Wellington Paranormal.

Early childhood teachers are paid 23% less than kindergarten and school teachers with the same qualifications, experience and professional requirements. Next year that will blow out to 49% for some. NZEI and ECE employers have paused their collective agreement negotiations, because current government funding makes it impossible to reach a fair deal for teachers.

Early Childhood rep on NZEI Te Riu Roa's National Executive, Virginia Oakly, said the Government needed to act now to fix this injustice.

"A teacher is a teacher and it's outrageous that long-term underfunding of the sector has created such a disparity in teacher pay," she said.

"Today we launch a video as part of our ECE Voice campaign to help bring the message to communities around the country that ECE teachers rock! Quality early childhood education makes a significant difference for our children and sets them up for a lifetime of learning. Every teacher doing such an important job deserves a fair go."

Ms Oakly urged everyone who cares about early childhood education to add their voice to the call for fair pay for all ECE teachers at ECEVoice.org

The video campaign features Karen O’Leary, head teacher at Wellington's Adelaide Early Childhood Centre and New Zealand's favourite paranormal investigating officer on Wellington Paranormal.

“I know how important this work is. I know how much teaching goes on every day in ECE centres around the country and I know how unfair it feels to not have pay parity with the rest of the teachers of New Zealand,” she said.

The campaign was shot in Wellington at Avalon Studios by Double Denim with a crowd of ECE teachers and their supporters.

Watch the video

Broadcast-ready file for download can be requested at media@nzei.org.nz

Find still images from the video shoot here.

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