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NZ Minister for Regulation of New Zealand comments on reducing ECEC red tape
Freya Lucas
Dec 11, 2024
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New Zealand’s Minister for Regulation, David Seymour has made a speech about reducing both red tape and barriers to early childhood education (ECE) in New Zealand, commenting on progress on the changes his Government have made so far, and plans in this space for the future.
“When I was delegated responsibility for the ECE Sector from the Minister for Education it became immediately clear that my focus had to be on reducing red tape and regulatory obstacles for the early learning sector,” he began.“While there is huge demand for ECEs from families across New Zealand, numbers show supply isn’t keeping up. That is why we are committed to making changes which will allow the industry (sic.) to expand and continue to provide high-quality service for families and their children.”
“I wouldn’t blame you for being sceptical of the government, considering how much it has heaped on to your plate in terms of red tape and regulation in recent years. I’m here to tell you that this government has a different approach, and I hope that our first year is evidence of our commitment to make your life easier, and therefore the lives of the parents and children who use your services.”
Throughout 2024, he continued, the Government has been actively engaging with the early childhood sector on ways to provide regulatory relief, sharing the following updates:
Regulations that have been removed
Sector feedback has informed the changes implemented, with the Government working with the Ministry of Education to provide immediate regulatory relief while the Ministry for Regulation carried out their wider sector review.
“My focus has been on making practical and sensible changes in regulatory areas – and doing this as quickly as possible – to ease some of the pressure on services and their staffing, and help avoid increased fees, reduced operating hours, or even closure in some cases,” Minister Seymour said.
These changes include:
- Stopping the person responsible change that was planned for August, to give services more flexibility in who can perform this important supervisory role
- Getting rid of network approval so that providers can immediately apply for a probationary licence to operate a new early learning service
- Scrapping the change for home-based ECE that was scheduled for next year, which would have required at least 80 per cent of educators to be qualified while the rest must be in training. The Government is replacing this with a more flexible requirement where educators must either be qualified or in training. This lessens the pressure on home-based providers and reduces barriers to attracting new educators and growing their businesses to meet demand from parents and families
- Allowing persons responsible to work in more than two home-based services per month from next year. This helps make it easier for home-based ECE service providers to arrange relief cover for person(s) responsible who are sick or take leave.
“The network approval change is a great example of how we can empower local communities,” the Minister said.
“Instead of the Ministry of Education micromanaging where you can open an early childhood education (ECE) centre and whether or not you can expand and how many children you can have at your ECE centre, we're actually going to leave the decision up to the people that risk their own money to start them and the parents who truly know what is best for their children, who decide to send them there because they're happy, because they're safe, and because they're learning.”
“Those are the people who should have the power, and these are the people who will have the power. It means people spend less time on the bureaucracy of justifying their existence and more time on the empowerment of being able to do it their way.”
The ECE regulatory review
The Ministry for Regulation will soon complete a sector review for the Early Childhood Education sector, to address major issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation.
“It was the first sector that Cabinet chose to undergo a sector review, which reflects how much there is to address and how many people we can help by doing so,” Minister Seymour said.
“If we can make it easier for educators to focus on children's safety and learning, and less on the paperwork, then it will be the children who benefit most.”
The public consultation in July and August received over 2,300 responses including over 500 written submissions from parents, teachers, service providers, peak bodies, and a range of other people and organisations interested in the future of ECE in New Zealand.
“I know that the Ministry for Regulation also met with many of you personally too and gathered feedback during face-to-face meetings, so many thanks for your help and contribution,” he continued.
Based on the feedback, the Ministry for Regulation has identified four key themes for the review report:
- The ECE regulatory system is not fit-for-purpose for the current ECE sector context
- The licensing criteria is a blunt and disproportionate tool
- ECE regulatory requirements are confusing
- ECE regulatory practice conflates requirements with recommendations in some cases.
The Ministry for Regulation is working closely with the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office to understand sector concerns and inform its recommendations, with the Minister saying he was looking forward to reading the draft report before the end of this year.
ECE Funding Review
Funding is also front of mind for many providers. In the current financial climate money is hard to come by, so the Government has to be smarter with every dollar it spends, the Minister said.
“In addition to removing red tape and barriers to early learning, I think it’s time we consider whether the funding for ECE is helping as much as it can, particularly in keeping costs down for families and accommodating more parents who want to return to the workforce.”
“We want to ensure that New Zealand families are getting the maximum value out of the approximately $2.7 billion ECE providers get from Vote Education. This is currently in early stages. I’m preparing a proposal for the Cabinet so that the Government can commit to this review.”
Three changes to ease funding pressure were made in October:
- Simplified the pay parity scheme to cover only permanently employed part and full-time certificated teachers. This aims to reduce the cost of relievers and make it easier for services to support a permanent workforce
- Removed the unnecessary administration associated with the discretionary hours condition. As a result, services are no longer required to record attempts to find a certificated reliever even when there is no realistic chance of getting one. This frees up services to focus on provision of services to children
- Allocated $191 million as part of Budget 2024 for cost adjustment to the ECE funding rates. While I would have liked to secure more funding, I hope the increase to funding rates from 1 January 2025 will be a great help.
Food in ECE
Another initiative that will provide healthy lunches to more children in ECE across New Zealand will be underway from next year.
“When I was given the job of handling the school lunches programme, I was alarmed at the cost to taxpayers and was certain that by engaging with the private sector and using business acumen we would be able to save taxpayers’ money,” Minister Seymour said.
“Even I couldn’t imagine how inefficiently the programme had been run up until that stage.”
“I also saw an inconsistency in the programme’s delivery. If the Government is providing food for school-aged children in need, why is it not just as important to provide food for younger children in need?”
“The more we can do to support good nutrition from a young age, the more likely children are to reach their potential.”
“Because of the Government's financial prudence with the school lunch programme, we were able to redirect some cost savings to contracting KidsCan to expand its ECE healthy lunch programme from 6,000 children to up to 16,000. All two- to five-year-olds attending eligible ECE services that opt in will be able to access nutritious food, which we know is important for early brain development.”
“The first 1,000 days are key to a child’s development. I am proud we can innovate to provide help for even more children who need it.”
To access the Minister’s remarks in full please see here.
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