Early Childhood Council Annual Conference

Early Childhood Council Annaul Conference, Fenton Conference Centre, Grand Tiara Hotel and Conference
Centre, Rotorua

Kia ora koutou
Talofa lava, Ni hao

This government has a vision for early childhood education in 2012.

This vision is that all children will be able to access early childhood education, regardless of circumstance.

Early childhood education in New Zealand will be high quality, and unique to the New Zealand context.

There will be a diverse range of services to meet the varying needs of families.

Parents will value the contribution that early childhood education makes to New Zealand society.

There will be noticeable differences in children’s achievement when they begin school.

These differences will be visible when New Zealand’s achievement is compared to other similar countries.

Early education will contribute to a strong economy and our families, young and old will be prospering.

That is our vision for early childhood education.

Our collective challenge is to think about strategic and innovative ways to get there.

Increasing participation in quality early childhood education

This year alone we are investing more than $500 million to lift quality and improve access in early childhood education.

The Government has made an ongoing, wider investment in a high quality, sustainable early childhood education sector.

The investment contributes to Government’s goals of security and opportunity for families young and old, by building strong learning foundations for more young New Zealanders.

We want to increase the number of children who attend early childhood education, but also increase the number of hours those children attend.

Last year there were over 185,000 enrolments in early childhood education, mainly in education and care services. Average hours of enrolment are also increasing each year.

While we are continuing to make great gains in participation we can always do better.

Did you know that children who enter decile 1 schools are ten times less likely to have attended early childhood education, than a child who enters a decile 10 school?

I do not think this is satisfactory, especially when we know children from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit most from early childhood education.

Free early childhood education

From July next year government will provide funding for up to 20 hours free early childhood education for three and four-year-olds attending teacher-led services and, like existing funding, for up to six hours a day. Although services cannot charge fees for the free hours, they may wish to ask parents for donations for extra costs. This Government values diversity in the sector and does not want to constrain parents from getting extra services if that’s what they want.

I would like to see all teacher-led services offering free early childhood education.

Free early childhood education will challenge services to think carefully about what they provide for children of all ages.

I would like your services to consider how best to provide this free education for three and four-year-olds.

I encourage you to talk to your parent community and explore different options. It is important for you to make decisions that work well for everyone.

A sector advisory group has been convened to advise on the roll-out of Free ECE.

I believe input from the early childhood sector is vital to ensure this policy is workable and practical for both parents and the providers of services.

You may be aware that Sue Thorne has been contributing to the advisory group discussions.

I expect further information to be available for the wider sector from July this year.

From the beginning of this month more families are eligible for family assistance. Almost three in every four New Zealand families with dependent children are now entitled to Family Assistance tax credits.

As part of this, the rates for the child care subsidy increased again to help make early childhood education more affordable for families.

Quality – setting minimum standards

In order to achieve our vision of high quality services, we need to have clear minimum standards that apply to all services.

The regulatory review aims to clarify the existing requirements that apply to early childhood services and make the system easier to understand and more transparent.

In May and June this year services will be sent the draft criteria that will be used for licensing.

I encourage you all to provide feedback on the draft criteria so we can see if the requirements are clearer for the sector and improve upon the current system.

Your feedback will inform the decisions on the final requirements.

The Ministry of Education is also going to trial the draft criteria in 150 licensed services and 40 playgroups.

Lifting quality

Government’s goal is to lift the quality of early childhood education in New Zealand.

Qualified teachers are key contributors to the quality of a teacher-led centre.

Sector progress towards getting more people qualified and registered has been good.

Last year over 46 percent of teachers in education and care services held a Diploma of Teaching (ECE) or higher.

That’s a 13 percent increase in the number of qualified teachers compared to 2004.

There are nearly 5,000 enrolments in early childhood teacher education, and every year we are getting more and more graduates.

I expect the 2007 target will be challenging for many services, but we should not lose sight of our goal to improve the quality of teaching and learning for our children.

I encourage you all to keep going with increasing the number of qualified and registered staff in your centre because this initiative is a key priority for government.

Further information about the 2007 target will be available later this year.

Importance of research

High quality research is essential if we are to lift standards across our education system.

Just recently we released the Competent Children at 14 report.

This research found that even at age 14, quality early childhood education has a positive impact on the learning of children across a range of backgrounds and circumstances.

The report is an endorsement of the major investment we are making in early childhood education, including steps to make it more accessible and affordable for all families.

Research shows that quality early childhood education builds the lifelong foundations of successful learning for our children, and that they gain long term benefit from regular and intensive participation.

Quality process – good news stories

I am excited to hear about some of the quality centres we have operating in New Zealand.

Greerton Childcare Centre in Tauranga has a unique and innovative shared leadership staffing structure to support the learning of children.

All 16 staff are leaders with each of them taking a primary caregiving role with responsibility for just a few children. As primary caregiver they are the key point of contact for parents.

As the children get older and move on into the over two’s centre the children choose who their primary caregiver will be.

All 16 staff are qualified to the diploma level and all are registered teachers.

Greerton Childcare Centre has also been selected as a new Centre of Innovation to further develop their innovative practice.

Feedback from the first six centres of innovation already shows an improvement in quality in those centres. Their excellent work has attracted international interest.

We all know the involvement of parents and whânau can work wonders for their children’s learning.

That’s why I’m excited to hear about community initiatives that are about engaging families in children’s learning.

Last month Te Runanga O Te Rarawa helped organise an expo to encourage parents and whânau to participate in structured play activities focussing on how children learn and develop.

Participants’ feedback show parents really appreciated learning new skills to use with their children, particularly about learning through play and discovery and the importance of oral language.

After the expo local services also reported high interest in enrolments.

You will also be aware of Team-Up, a programme all about getting families to understand the important contribution they can make to their children’s learning.

Feedback to date is telling us that many parents believe the messages apply to them personally and many are getting much more involved in early childhood centres and at school as a result of Team-Up.

This feedback is great to hear. While it is still early days I hope to see real gains for children resulting.

The Bay of Plenty Polytechnic Early Childhood Education Centre has done a lot of work around non-verbal communication with their babies and toddlers.

Almost all the staff in this centre are qualified.

At a recent conference on Baby Signing the service had clearly documented the relationship between the child, the parent and the teacher.

This centre has tremendous input from the parents.

These examples of centres making the difference for their children and communities are some of the early childhood education success stories from up and down the country.

Our job now is to continue this fine work.

I’m pleased at the progress we are making, but want to make sure our focus stays on our long term goals to improve participation in quality early childhood education.

This way every child in New Zealand will benefit.

Ending remarks

Thank you for this opportunity to address your conference.

The next few years will be challenging and exciting for everyone involved in the early childhood sector, particularly for education and care services like yours.

I encourage you to keep challenging yourselves.

The work you do significantly improves the learning and wellbeing of children throughout New Zealand – whoever they are and wherever they are.

I now declare your conference officially open and I wish you all well for three days of stimulating debate and discussion in the interests of every New Zealand child.