Horrifying injuries, harmful sexualised behaviour and teachers talking about rape in front of children: What complaints about ECE services tell us about the state of the sector

Horrifying injuries, harmful sexualised behaviour and teachers talking about rape in front of children: What complaints about ECE services tell us about the state of the sector

July 21, 2025.

A child escaping from a centre by digging under the fence, multiple instances of toddlers breaking bones twice in a matter of months, and allegations of inappropriate handling of a child’s sexualised behaviour are among complaints about ECE services made through MyECE, the website for the ECE Parents’ Council.

Last year, parents and caregivers submitted 80 complaints through the website. The complaints were forwarded to the Ministry of Education.

Concerns about short staffing at services, staff yelling at or roughly handling children, infrequent nappy changing, children being repeatedly bitten by peers, and a lack of clarity over fees charged to families were repeatedly raised in the complaints. Several of the complaints detailed how their children were injured, sometimes seriously, at the service.

In most cases we don’t know what happened after the Ministry received the complaints, including whether the Ministry investigated or upheld the complaint.

MyECE has withheld the names of all services subject to complaints, in the interest of natural justice and to protect the complainants’ privacy. The volume of complaints we received showed how important the anonymous complaints service provided by MyECE is to parents and caregivers.

Parents’ concerns laid bare: Anonymised extracts/summaries from some of the complaints

1. A parent said the exposed end of a bike handle sliced a child’s chin, requiring the child to have surgery. The complainant alleged that the child’s parent had previously raised concerns about the safety of the bikes with the business manager and two team leaders but nothing was done to address the problem.

2. When a parent reported to an ECE service manager an incident where a head teacher put a child in a rubbish bin for swearing, they were left feeling dismissed and ignored. The parent said: “They shared my identity with the teacher, and without my permission. This has left me feeling vulnerable and distressed”.

3. A parent said that a teacher told them that their daughter was caught with another child  in the playhouse with their pants down “not touching just looking”.  The daughter then told the parent the next week the same girl involved had again pulled the daughter’s pants down when they were in the playhouse and had been “rubbing and touching her vagina and anus”.  When the parent informed the manager and owner about the second incident, they allegedly responded that the child’s behaviour was “normal”.

“Every time I tried to express my concern about this child, her behaviour and what she had done to my child it was brushed off as if I was the one in the wrong…I never received an apology… and I’m disgusted at the way they have handled this whole situation so casually. I would hate to think what else they brush under the rug if this is how they deal with such a serious situation like this,” the parent wrote in their complaint.

4. A father said his son broke his arm twice at daycare in just eight weeks. “My wife requested video footage of what had happened and the centre manager said that it would be too far [away] for us to see anything…One of the managers did a quick investigation. I feel that they have neglected my son in taking care of him.”

5. Another complaint said a child at a different centre broke his leg twice in six months. They said both times the injuries occurred when the boy, who was between 1 and 2 years old, was playing on the older children’s playground. The boy had to have surgery to reset his femur after the second fracture and was in a full body cast, according to the complaint. 

“We feel the accident report they wrote up played down the whole incident. 

“[He] can’t move from a lying down position. We are worried he will have permanent damage to his leg.

“[His] parents now need to figure out taking six weeks off work to care for him. He needs two people to even change his nappy and cannot go in a car seat.” 

6. A teacher claimed that other staff at a centre they’d taught at talked “about killing themselves on the floor”. 
The complainant said the staff said “fuck this” and talked about drugs and rape in front of the children. Vapes would fall out of a colleague’s pocket while she was working and the woman pulled the fingers at children and told them to shut up, the teacher said.

7. A group of parents alleged the drink bottles they’d provided for their kids to keep at the centre they attended were not being washed properly, after they were found to have black mould under the lids. They also claimed that a child had escaped from the centre by digging under a fence. “The owner diminished this happening by saying a passer-by had the child until a teacher could get there,” they said.

“This is smearing the truth because the member of the public brought the child back to the daycare. 

“The way the owner described it, it was as if the teachers were watching the whole time but they were not. 

“The centre also didn’t call and inform the child’s parents for about four hours after the incident.”

Staff had noticed the gap in the fence the day before the child escaped, the complaint alleged, and the owner had put temporary boards up. The parents’ complaint also claimed that over the Christmas and New Year period whānau were told they would have to provide their own meals (which were usually provided by the centre). However, fees were not accordingly reduced.

What this tells us about complaints

The number of complaints MyECE received last year, along with their content, indicated that many parents and whānau were unhappy with the standard of care and education provided to their child by ECE services.

Multiple complainants said they were worried about their child facing repercussions at the service as a result of their complaint, if the service knew who it was who reported problems to authorities.

What we’d like to see changed

The ECE Parents’ Council is advocating for the Regulator to publicly release complaints information with details of the complaints it receives and actions taken. For example, disclosing whether investigators physically went to the ECE service to follow up, or if they just phoned the service operator to ask for their side of the story and ask about the complaint’s validity.

We are also urging the Government not to move forward with the proposed changes to make it optional for ECE services to prominently display information about complaints procedures and regulations.  These changes would make it harder for parents to access information about the standards their service should be meeting and make them aware they have a right to escalate their complaint to the Ministry. They could lead to information about making a complaint being buried on a service’s website.

We’d like to see the current requirements retained, as well as for the services to inform parents and caregivers of MyECE’s independent and anonymous complaint services in their information about complaints procedures.  We would also like the Regulator to publicly acknowledge MyECE’s independent, confidential complaints service on its website and in communications about how parents and caregivers can lodge a complaint about an ECE service.

We have also been told by whānau that there is no straightforward “next step” to escalate a complaint to when they don’t agree with the findings of the Ministry of Education (update 1 Sept 2026: ERO now handles all ECE complaints). It seems the Regulator’s word is final on complaints. We would like to see an independent complaints authority established, as is the case for other ministries/departments.

The ECE Parents’ Council would like to see a law change so that the Ministry (now ERO) is required by legislation, not just by policy, to protect the anonymity of parents as a matter of course. As part of these safe guards, we would support a mandatory “no retaliation” clause in ECE licensing, ensuring that services that retaliate against parents (and their children) who complain will have regulatory action taken against them and risk losing their licence.