Regulations, Rules, and ECE Service Legal Requirements
Regulations and Licensing Criteria: A Guide for Parents
The “My ECE Guide to Early Childhood Service Regulations and Licensing Criteria for Parents.”
View the full guide here.
The Education Review Office (ERO) now handles all complaints about early childhood services.
Before you fill in the form opposite, please read How to Make a Complaint. It includes clear steps and an email template you can use if you want to contact ERO yourself.
If you don’t feel comfortable contacting ERO directly, we can send the complaint on your behalf. We will include your contact details so ERO can reach you if they need more information for their investigation. We will also ask ERO not to reveal your identity to the service unless you give permission.
If you want to be fully anonymous, simply uncheck the box opposite. This tells us not to pass your name or contact details to ERO.
What to include in your complaint
Please make sure the form opposite includes:
Zoom in (+) to your city or town on the map to find what licensed services are near you.
In the National Register, look up service names to get details, reviews, rating, and other information. Use the compare button on the services you are interested in to compare.
Celebrating the best for children and families
The quality and differences a service makes are such that families want to shout from the roof-tops and tell us the great things about it. It follows the Ethical Conduct of Conduct and has had no recent licensing action taken against it.
The team behind the wonderful service deserve to have their skills, caring, and hard work acknowledged publicly by winning this Award.
Read about the requirements all licensed early childhood services must comply with.
If your service isn't meeting these, please speak up.
Have a conversation with the service manager or head teacher, if you feel comfortable to do so. Make a formal complaint using our complaint form or go directly to the Ministry of Education.
The regulations set out the very minimum standards for children's safety, health, education and what government is prepared to fund for staffing and service operation. So, it is a serious matter if a service does not always meet at least these minimum requirements.
The “My ECE Guide to Early Childhood Service Regulations and Licensing Criteria for Parents.”
View the full guide here.
You don't buy a car or house without asking questions and doing some background research, do you? You want to know as much as you can and about any warning signs. The same goes for choosing and using an early childhood service.
My ECE provides expert knowledge and straightforward information to allow parents to form their own opinions and be more confident to be involved in their child's early education and care.
Below are 4 featured articles - you will find more under the "Guidance" tab (or use the Search function).
A limit on group size and the total number of children placed together during the day in an early childhood programme is important. Much
Children escaping or left alone on the premises. © myECE.org.nz. Parent Support and Information. There is always a risk of children escaping – leaving unnoticed from
Flexible Childcare Assistance helps with the cost of informal childcare. There are no income or asset limits, which makes this support more widely available than many other payments.
Parents across the motu are deeply concerned about the proposal to make fundamental requirements for early childhood services optional. The ECE Parents Council spokesperson, Michelle De Bono said that standards are not just checkboxes; they are the backbone of quality care and education and making them optional would jeopardise children’s well-being and development.
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