Speech to Early Childhood Education sector– Reducing red tape and barriers to ECE

Education

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.

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 to expand and continue to provide high-quality service for families and their children.

I wouldn't blame you for being sceptical of 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.

The sector is integral to positive education outcomes because it is the gateway to our education system. It's important that families have access to affordable and quality early learning services because education during a child's early stages of growth helps build the foundations for future learning and social interactions.

So, I've gone to the sector and asked, how can the Government best support you? And I heard you loud and clear when you said that regulations are a pain point for many of you. Throughout 2024 We've been actively engaging with you on ways to provide regulatory relief.

I'm pleased to share our progress on the changes we've made so far, and what is coming up in the future.

Regulations that have been removed

Your feedback has informed changes that we have worked with the Ministry of Education to make, providing 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.

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% 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. 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 about being able to do it their way.

Those examples I've just outlined are what drives providers from continuing to operate, or from establishing new services. A sensible approach reflects the reality of operating a service while maintaining quality education and care of children. I want you to havemore flexibility to manage your service, and I want to support parents' continued access to early learning services in their communities so that they can go to work and their children can benefit from the good quality ECE you provide.

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. 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.

Thank you to all of you who have provided input on this work so far.

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.

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. I look 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.

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 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 Cabinet so that the Government can commit to this review.

Changes to ease funding pressure

While this is underway, I was pleased to make two changes in October that the sector had originally put forward to ease funding pressures. We have:

• 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.

I appreciate the positive feedback I have received on these changes.

Food in ECE

I also look forward to another initiative that will provide healthy lunches to more children in ECE across the country 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. 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 not just as important to provide food for younger children in need? Sir Peter Gluckman's research clearly demonstrates that good nutrition is one of the key factors affecting early brain development. 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 progrrame, 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.

Closing remarks

ECE services provide families and parents a choice to confidently leave their children in the care of others so they can work, study or volunteer. It is particularly an enabler for parents who want to rejoin the paid workforce.

Parents want to know their child is safe and well cared for, but costs and waiting lists because of burdensome rules and regulations put ECE out of reach for many.

I hope that the work the Government has done in this first year is making a difference for you, your business, and the families who are so grateful for what you do.

There's a lot more work that needs to be done though, and with the sector review ending I hope to have more positive regulatory change on the horizon.

Like all of you. I want New Zealand's youngest citizens to thrive, and that starts with listening to the hard-working educators in the field. Thanks to everyone for having me here tonight.