Early childhood advocates fear funding review will put business bottom lines over children

Many early childhood advocates are worried about the future of their sector as consultation for a major funding review winds up.

It is being run by a ministerial advisory group that is trying to simplify the early childhood funding system and improve the way it targets those who need it most.

The group's proposals unveiled just over a month ago included dismantling the pay parity scheme that helps early childhood education (ECE) services pay their teachers a similar amount to kindergarten and school teachers, and changing funding bands that reward them for having more qualified teachers.

A senior lecturer in early childhood education at the University of Auckland, Kiri Gould, said a fundamental flaw of the review was that its recommendations could not increase government spending.

"They're being asked to make quite important decisions about early childhood within a neutral fiscal envelope which seems like a recipe for disaster because early childhood is so under-funded," she said.

"The funding review is sort of being set up to fail from the beginning."

Dr Gould said much of the ECE sector was privately-owned but the advisory group had not considered how it used government funding in combination with parents' fees to provide education.

She said the group's initial proposals appeared to be aimed at saving money on teachers so it could be used elsewhere.

Kirsty McCully from teacher union NZEI said teachers fought hard to win pay parity but it was potentially being sacrificed.

"Someone's got to pay for any initiatives that are achieved across the rest of the other proposals in the funding review. So the people that are going to be paying are teachers because there's no other money to fund any other improvements across the sector," she said.

McCully said that and other potential changes would harm the quality of early education.

"The government is not prioritising high quality early childhood education and the outcomes for tamariki. They're prioritising minimising costs to the Crown, and they are prioritising the ability for businesses to make a profit out of early childhood education. The only way you could pay for that is if you downgrade the quality of early childhood education for children, and that's why teachers are up in arms about this," she said.

The chief executive of Te Rito Maioha, a membership organisation for early childhood centre owners and teachers, Kathy Wolfe, said its submission to the group would ignore the fiscal neutrality requirement and she expected others' would too.

"This review has come at a time where things are just not working for early childhood education whatsoever. It's complex, it's underfunded, and just moving money around is not going to fix the problems that we're experiencing," she said.

Wolfe said Te Rito Maioha's submission would call for more funding and a system that ensured every child had access to quality early childhood education that was affordable, at services that were viable and employed 80-100 percent qualified teachers.

She said the advisory group's proposals around teacher qualifications and pay would have a negative impact and would be opposed by most of the sector.

Wolfe agreed that many in the sector did not trust the review.

"There definitely are suspicions. People are worried that this is not about public good anymore. It's about potential privatisation of early childhood education, which is not what the sector wants," she said.

"Early childhood education is a public good. It is a national investment in education for Aotearoa."

Simon Laube was on the advisory group and was chief executive of the Early Childhood Council which represented centre owners.

He said from the council's point of view the review had been transparent.

Laube said the council's members had varied views on the funding review, but most wanted any change to go slow and in stages.

"If there are particular directions that change goes down, then those changes need to be modelled to see what they will actually mean rather than you find out later when your centre is no longer viable or you can't offer the service that you want to anymore," he said.

Laube said the council did not have a united view on the future of pay parity.

"I don't think anybody disagrees that there are major problems with the pay parity scheme, but that doesn't mean there's agreement around the solution yet. So there's a lot more work to be done," he said.

Mike Bedford is an advocate for quality education and safety for under fives and heads ECE Reform, a group of several hundred like-minded people.

He said he was not making a submission because the funding review and the regulatory review that preceded it ignored the main issues raised by teachers and others.

"It is very clear in the submissions that were made to the Ministry for Regulation that the top concerns are the conditions for children in the sector and they have been pushed aside," he said.

"The early childhood sector is in a desperate state... it's not at breaking point, it has been breaking for a number of years."

Bedford said important issues like improved teacher:child ratios and group sizes were being ignored.

He said the Education Minister Erica Stanford should stop the process and conduct an inquiry.

Advisory group chair Linda Meade told RNZ in a statement it had not made any decisions.

"Importantly, the consultation document does not present predetermined conclusions. It identifies areas where we think change could make a difference and sets out a range of options to test through public consultation," she said.

"This does not mean we will recommend change in every area. The purpose of consultation is to hear from everyone who uses, works in or cares about ECE before reaching our conclusions."

Meade said the consultation document was informed by the experiences, advice and perspectives shared by more than 2000 people during the advisory group's earlier engagement, together with research, data and evidence.

"Our final recommendations will be based on all that we have learned and the feedback received through consultation. Our advice will be our assessment of how to most effectively support quality and sustainability in New Zealand's early childhood education system."

She said the group would provide its advice and recommendations to the government by the end of the year.