Our ECE Parents’ Submission to the Ministry for Regulation on the Regulations Review

You are here: Home » Information » Regulations, Rules & Requirements » Our ECE Parents’ Submission to the Ministry for Regulation on the Regulations Review

Share Me

The Ministry for Regulation is reviewing early childhood regulations on behalf of Hon David Seymour, with the intention of reducing regulations and compliance for services.

The funding services get will likely reduce if the standards they are required to meet drop. The whole early childhood sector is being impacted by the review, including daycare, Kindergarten, Home-based, Playcentre, Kōhanga Reo, Aoga Amata, Montessori, etc.

Below is a copy of our submission.

ECE PARENTS’ COUNCIL SUBMISSION ON THE REGULATORY SECTOR REVIEW INTO ECE

Submission to the Ministry for Regulation
30 August 2024

Introduction

The ECE Parents’ Council welcomes the opportunity to make this submission on the regulatory sector review into ECE.

Parents are a main stakeholder in ECE. Parents views have long been overlooked in policy and decision-making regarding ECE issues.

The ECE Parents’ Council[1] was formed to ensure parents views are heard.

It seems from reports[2]^,[3] that ECE service providers who might not understand or like adhering to rules are attracting political support.

But we believe that regulations are necessary. Not only are regulations necessary, but compliance also needs to be regularly monitored and enforced.

We choose to use regulated early childhood services for peace of mind, believing that when we go into a service and see it has a licence displayed on the wall that this means a professional level of care and education will be provided and our children will survive and thrive in the environment.

We ask that this review ensures that the best interests of children are the primary consideration. Please don’t propose any changes that will have negative impacts on or unintended consequences for our children.

We respectfully request that you test your analysis and consult with us on all proposals before you take these to the Minister (Phase 4 of the review timeline).

Our submission contains several recommendations, including around child protection and health and safety, regulating group sizes, staff qualifications and improving how ratios are defined and implemented in centre-based teacher-led services.

Please put in place:

Annual inspections of ECE services by the Ministry of Education

ensuring regular and adequate monitoring of standards, and
identifying any problems and needs early.

Better transparency and sharing of information with parents concerning their ECE service

enabling parents to know what’s really going on in their child’s ECE service (this will lead to parents being in a stronger position to advocate for their children, make more informed choices, and influence the quality of ECE provision).

Controls on costs parents face when using ECE

preventing unexpected fee hikes,
reducing opportunity for profiteering by private operators,
ensuring families are not charged for access to any hours within the 20-Hours ECE, and
supporting free kindergartens to return to being donation-based so children can experience ECE no matter what their family income may be.

When announcing the terms of reference for this regulatory sector review into ECE, Minister Seymour said:

“Instead of regulatory compliance activity… we can reduce costs for parents, and we can ensure that child safety, child happiness and child education are at the centre of everything that they do[4].”

Therefore, we expect the Minister and the Ministry for Regulation will do two things. First, ensure that no decision on changing rules, regulations and regulatory systems is made without a child impact assessment (using the CIA Tool[5] available on the MSD website) and that feedback is sought from internationally recognised experts in child development and ECE quality. Second, have accurate figures on compliance activity costs and make this information publicly available. ECEs must be required to reduce their fees and other charges to families by at least the amount that compliance is costed at.

Our position

The ECE Parents’ Council agrees that a regulatory sector review into early childhood education is needed but disagrees that it’s needed because there are too many regulatory requirements that ECE service operators shouldn’t have to meet.

We believe that the problem does not lie with the regulations but with the fact that there is irregular and inadequate monitoring of compliance to ensure services are meeting minimum standards all the time. Enforcement methods are either not sufficient or strong enough to prevent any service that wishes to break the rules from doing so. There is a lack any real sense of responsibility to parents and caregivers and accountability.

The ECE Parents’ Council believes that the system is not working as well as it should to protect our children from harm and ensure a good standard of care and education is provided whatever ECE they attend. We would like to see the ECE regulatory systems strengthened to uphold the rights of children and ensure good standards of care and education, transparency, and accountability.

Recommendations

The regulatory sector review into ECE must uphold the rights of children and make sure that:

1. Risk to children is not assessed or balanced against compliance costs and time. (Note that reducing inconvenience to service providers and costs of compliance over the protection of children’s lives and wellbeing is not acceptable in our eyes).

2. No changes to rules or regulatory systems are made before feedback is sought from internationally recognised experts in child development and ECE quality and a child impact assessment (CIA)[6] is undertaken and considered.

3. It is made explicit in the report/s to the Minister which of the review recommendations are supported by empirical research and best practice knowledge, and which recommendations are not and why.

Ensure ECE services are good for children

4. Introduce legislation for class/group size in teacher-led centre-based services, with each group having its own teachers. (Group size is a significant predicator of children’s cognitive and social development, and therefore many countries regulate for small group sizes in their ECEs. But there’s no requirements for group sizes within NZ ECE centres[7] which may have as many as 150 children).

5. Improve the Ratios and Qualification standard (Regulation 44)

Change how ratios are calculated in centre-based teacher-led services so the required ratio is set per the number and ages of children in a room or space. (At present it is legal for one teacher with as many as ten or more babies to be left caring for them in a room for most or all the day while other staff are elsewhere in the centre, and this should not be permitted).
Immediately amend the adult-chid ratio of 1:15 in sessional (part-day) teacher-led centre-based services and make it the same as all-day centres (which is currently 1:10).
Set timelines for improving baseline ratios for children of different ages in teacher-led centre-based services (a recommendation is: 1 adult to no more than 3 children aged under 2 years, 1 adult to no more than 6 two-year-olds, and 1 adult to no more than 8 children 3 years and older[8]).
In all teacher-led centre-based services prohibit adults who are cleaning or doing maintenance from being counted as part of meeting the minimum ratio requirements as they are unable to give their full attention to the children. (For example, cleaning a fridge, mopping floors, or water blasting sand from playground matting).
Amend the requirements for staff qualification in teacher-led centre-based services so that teachers who are not qualified in ECE teaching with a current practising certificate cannot be counted toward meeting the minimum ratio requirement. (Our children deserve to have teachers who are early childhood professionals. Student teachers and other adults could still assist the ECE professionals over and above minimum ratio).

6. Change requirements for the ‘Person Responsible’ in teacher-led centre-based services to ensure that the person who acts in this role (a) has a full practising certificate, and (b) is a teacher who holds a recognised qualification in ECE. (A ‘Person Responsible’ for supervising other staff and children should not be a beginner teacher, or one who does not hold a recognised ECE teaching qualification.)

7. Retain and strengthen the Curriculum Standard (Regulation 43).

Make sure every ECE service provides children with an educationally stimulating environment, that supports children’s agency, views children as competent learners, and respects their family culture and home languages.
Make sure ECE services fully implement the national early childhood curriculum.

8. Require teacher-led centre-based and home-based services to have a documented procedure on how they invite, encourage, and support parents and caregivers to observe the programme and participate in their child’s education and learning. (This will support improved outcomes for children and reduce or eliminate practices in some services of treating parents as a nuisance and being shown the door shortly after arrival).

9. Add a requirement to the Premises and Facilities Standard (Regulation 45) to ensure the physical environments for children in all services include a lot of softness (e.g., grass, cushions, rugs, carpet, couches, swings), and are not permitted to be dominated by hardness (e.g., wood, concrete, or other hard materials and artificial ground surfaces).

10. Add the following requirements to the Health and Safety Standard (Regulation 46)

Ban no-touch policies and practices such as not cuddling sad or crying children and leaving infants and toddlers to cry themselves to sleep.
Ban see-through toilet doors and partitions and require all centre-based services to have doors on children’s toilets or partitions that give children adequate privacy and protect their dignity.
Ban the use of personal cell phones and electronic devices by teaching staff and managers in teacher-led centre-based services when they are with children and require that personal devices are not used to take photos/ images of children.
Require all centre-based services with 20 or more children to have a CO2 monitor in use in indoor areas used by children. (Without a monitor, there’s no way to be sure that ventilation is adequate in all rooms to reduce or prevent the spread of airborne diseases.)
Obligate all ECE services to keep a record of staff immunisations. (Health NZ and the Office of Early Childhood Education recommends this, but regulation only requires ECEs to keep a record of child immunisations. Staff can transmit diseases such as whooping cough and measles to vulnerable children.)
Establish standards for the management of health conditions such as food allergies and coeliac disease in home-based and centre-based services. (It’s hard on children and families when services don’t have knowledge of how to manage various health conditions.)
Require all ECEs to report all serious injury incidents to the Ministry of Education even if children are not admitted into hospital overnight and are able to go home after treatment (e.g. broken bone).
Compel all ECEs to report serious ‘allergen incidents’ (i.e. anaphylaxis to a food allergen) to MPI/Food Safety or their verifier and to the Ministry of Education.

11. Retain requirements that ECEs must not provide food to children that is of high choking risk for their age, without altering its texture as recommended by the Ministry of Health (and Plunket) to make it safer to eat.

12. Do not exempt ECE services from doing proper safety checking of all children’s workers in compliance with the Children’s Act 2014.

13. Keep the requirements in place for written records of children’s care, including documenting children’s sleep times and checks, nappy changes, injuries and accidents, medicine given and permission, and when food is provided to a child that was not supplied from their home. But, exempt services from keeping documentation on a child during the times that the child’s parent or caregiver is present with them at the service. (Some reasons to retain requirements for documenting children’s care include:

When records are kept, it can help to provide a reminder to staff of actions needed to be taken and helps to prevent neglect e.g. so a baby won’t be left in a soiled nappy all day, or a child can’t be forgotten about and left in the sleep room alone.
Parents can find it helpful to know how long their infant or young child sleeps and at what time of day. Written records are necessary because staff may not always remember accurately, they may not have time to talk to parents, there may be a relief teacher who does not know who the child’s parent is, or the child’s teacher may not be present when parents collect their child.
A record of the food that a child is given is important because if a child is given a food they are allergic to, is not suitable for their age or capability to chew, or is against their family beliefs and customs, their parent needs to be able to check and know. The food record is also evidence to allow the Ministry of Education to check that the service does not serve unsafe or inappropriate food.
Keeping records of accidents and child injuries is important in case a child needs medical follow-up and to ensure the service has communicated with parents about the accident/injury. Records give the service information it can use for evaluation of its safety and supervision practices to better meet children’s needs.
No person in an ECE service should give medication to a child without proof of the child’s parent or caregiver approval. It’s also important to be able to check the dosage given and when the child last received their medication.)

14. Add stronger requirements for transparency and accountability to the Governance, Management, and Administration Standard (Regulation 47)

Require ECEs to inform the families of all enrolled children in writing should any agency be investigating them for regulatory breaches due to a complaint, a serious incident, or information supplied by another agency such as ERO or Worksafe.
Require ECEs to immediately inform families of all enrolled children in writing of any downgrade of licence or written directive to fix a serious health or safety risk received from the Ministry of Education. (Centre-based licensing criterion GMA1 only says that the licence document must be displayed on a wall at the centre and there is no requirement to directly inform parents of suspected or actual non-compliance. The equivalent Home-based criterion only requires that the service inform parents how they can access the service’s current licence certificate).
Introduce legislation requiring all community-based and non-profit organisations that provide ECEs to have parents involved in governance and a parent committee for the ECE service. (Currently some do, but there are bigger organisations that exclude parents – their immediate community – from being involved in governance or do not have parent committees.)
Compel ECEs to provide parents with the name/s of who owns or is ultimately responsible for the service and how to contact them directly should they need to. (Currently parents may have no idea who the actual owner/s are or who the person is at the top of the organisation that their ECE operates under).

Improve the monitoring and enforcement of minimum standards

15. Compel the Ministry of Education to undertake annual inspections of all licenced ECEs – thereby ensuring regular and adequate monitoring of standards. (This would assist services to be aware of, own, and fix problems early before a child is harmed, before staff and parents make complaints or leave the service, and to reduce the need for licence withdrawal leaving parents without childcare).

16. Introduce mandatory reporting for government agencies and the Teaching Council to the Ministry of Education when they suspect any service to be non-compliant with education regulations and/or licensing criteria.

17. Make legislative changes to support the Ministry of Education to take swifter action[9] to suspend or close ECEs that have (a) serious breaches of curriculum and/or health and safety, (b) multiple breaches (may not be serious) that are not fixed within a six-month time frame, and ( c ) when a service is a repeat offender for multiple or serious licence breaches – 3 strikes[10].

18. Eliminate the potential for third parties[11] to influence the decision of the ministry to suspend or cancel the licence of any service. But retain the right of all service providers under Section 39 of the Education (Early Childhood Services) Act 2008 to appeal against the decision or direction to a District Court with civil jurisdiction.

Make sure that rules can be quickly and efficiently revised as the need arises to better protect children

19. Require that following each serious incident involving a child or children, the Ministry of Education review what happened to determine if an existing rule or regulation needs to be tightened or a new rule or regulation formed to prevent something similar from happening again[12]. (There needs to be a legal obligation placed on the Ministry to engage in consultation without delay and fast track changes in licensing criteria or make requests to Government to amend current regulatory requirement and/or create new ones.)

Manage costs to parents and restrict ECE service profiteering

20. Introduce price caps or rules limiting how much and what fees ECE services can charge, this includes for-profit private services. (The Education and Training Act 2020 sets out that all licensed services must be funded by Government “enabling parental choice … of different types of provision”, however currently parental choice is limited by the high fees that ECE services can charge.)

21. Make it a breach of the law for ECEs to charge for any hours within the 20-Hours ECE[13] and require ECEs to show on invoices that these hours are $0.00.

22. Require that complete information on ECE service finances and spending is made available to parents.

The frequency with which ECEs must supply information on how they spend funding and how detailed needs to be specified. (Currently ECEs are only required to supply information on “how funding is spent”.)
The law needs to be expanded to include reporting of money received from fees and donations and spending of this. (This would enable parents to know if any fee increases are justified.)

Conclusion

23. The ECE Parents’ Council recommends that explicit effort is made to consider children’s rights and best interests.

24. The safety and quality of early childhood education and care for children must be the prime consideration.

25. Regulations and rules are important as these provide a baseline of standards below which no ECE service should operate. Regulations and requirements provide important safeguards.

26. There needs to be adequate monitoring and regular (yearly) inspections of ECEs by the Ministry of Education.

27. Stronger rules must be set to stop big fee hikes, enable all families to have access to the hours within 20-Hours ECE at no cost, and prevent the potential for profiteering by service providers.

28. Please accept our recommendations (as outlined above). Make ECEs and the ECE system better for children and families.

Thank you.

[1] ‘Overlooked’ parents form new ECE Parents Council | Stuff

[2] Falling apples and noisy trains – one side of fight against ECE red tape (newsroom.co.nz)

[3] David Seymour’s attack on red tape | RNZ

[4] David Seymour confirms terms of early childhood regulation review | RNZ News

[5] Child Impact Assessment Tool – Ministry of Social Development (msd.govt.nz)

[6] Child Impact Assessment Tool – Ministry of Social Development (msd.govt.nz)

[7] Group Size and Number of Children at Your Child’s ECE Centre (myece.org.nz)

[8] Structural Indicators of Quality Early Childhood Education and Childcare (oece.nz)

[9] Ministry of Education Struggles to Cancel Licence of Bad Centre (oece.nz)

[10] Rule-breaking ECE centres forced to shut (newsroom.co.nz)