The May 2010 budget saw National announce a cut of over $400m over four years from early childhood education funding. Education Minister Anne Tolley stated that this was a move by the government to "bring spending under control"According to Kay (2010) "nearly $300m of this is to come from cutting the higher funding rate to centres with more than 80% qualified teachers". What this meant was that from February 2011 the funding incentives for centres hiring qualified early childhood teachers were significantly cut (Ministry of Education, 2010).
Prior to the funding cuts, all-day, teacher-led centres with fully qualified teachers received $12.94 per hour for each child under 2 and $7.79 for every child over 2. In the 80-99% qualified staffing bracket the rates were $12.16 and $6.91 respectively. The funding changes have removed the funding from centres with 81-100% qualified staff altogether. Centres employing 80% qualified staff now get $11.80 per hour for under 2s and $6.53 for over 2s. This has created significant funding shortfalls for those services employing more than 80% fully qualified teachers. Early education services include; Kindergartens, Education and Care, Homebased, Te Kohanga Reo, Playcentres and other.
NZEI estimates that 2000 services will be affected by the funding cuts - 46% of the total services and 66% of teacher-led services. As a result services are being put in the position of having to raise fees, cut spending and make qualified staff redundancies. Who does it really affect? Our children and their families!!!
For more information about ECE funding changes visit the Ministry of Education website. Here are some useful facts and figures that I obtained from NZEI :
- Number of children enrolled in services impacted by the cuts - 93,000 which equates to 51.4% of enrolments.
- There are currently 4348 licensed services.
- There has been a 50.3% increase in child enrolments between 1990 and 2009.
- Participation of Maori and Pacific children has increased steadily over the past five years.
- New Zealand spends less than the OECD on early childhood education.
Certainly food for thought. I hope I have provided useful, relevant information for you, clarifying 2011 ECE funding cuts.
References
Hartevelt, J (2011). Further early childhood education cuts possible. Retrieved March 8 2011, from http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education.
Kay, M. (2010). More funding cuts loom for early childhood centres. Retrieved March 8, 2011, from http://www.stuff.co.nz/national.
Ministry of Education. (2010). Retrieved March 8, 2011, from http://www.minedu.govt.nz/
Neale. I (2011, February 6). ECE cuts slated as 'salt in Pacific wound'. Retrieved from Proquest Database.
New Zealand Educational Institute. (2009). Retrieved March 8, 2011 from http://www.nzei.org.nz/.
