Budget cuts to have mixed effects on early childhood centres
One of the Government’s more contentious decisions in the recent Budget was a reduction in early childhood education subsidies.
The previous Government gave childcare centres an incentive to employ trained teachers (by increasing their grants as centres hired a greater proportion of qualified staff), but this budget has done away with two of the highest bands of subsidy, effectively cutting funding to centres where more than 80 per cent of staff are trained. Unless these providers are prepared to reduce their staffing costs, the shortfall will result in higher fees for parents and caregivers.
Loretta Horton, head teacher at Golden Kids Inc Early Learning Centre, said from the information available to date, Golden Kids would lose some funding in February 2011 when the changes come into effect. The centre will look at strategies for maintaining the quality of education and care, but an increase in the hourly fees would be inevitable to recover some of the funding losses, Loretta said.
“Golden Kids has been operating within the 80 to 99 per cent funding band for the last four years. The next funding band is at 100 percent. The new rates that have been released indicate that a new 80-per-cent-plus funding band will be created and that will be less than the current funding we receive, and that will affect the parents and caregivers a lot more. Updated information will be available on our website, www.goldenkids.co.nz.”
The announcement brought some good news, though. “Our centre has given a thumbs-up to the 2010 Budget for not withdrawing financial support from the 20 hours Early Childhood Education scheme, as this will enable families to continue to access Early Childhood Education,” Loretta said.
For the Golden Bay Kindergarten, funded at 100 per cent, the drop is anticipated to have a significant effect. Nelson Kindergarten Association general manager Wendy Logan said she was “appalled” by the Government’s decision to target the number of qualified staff for early childhood education and confirmed that kindergartens “will lose funding but we have not yet worked out how we are going to approach it.”
The national body of the Childcare Association calls the funding changes a “brutal blow” that will potentially affect over 2000 teachers and 93,000 children. NZEI, the union representing early childhood teachers, believes the changes will “dumb down” the sector.
“The Government makes it look very positive but they’re doing it at the cost of dumbing down people who have been providing 100 per cent qualified staff,” said NZEI vice president Judith Nowartarski (NZ Herald 25 May).
The cuts are expected to save the government $280 million. Education Minister Anne Tolley plans to put an extra $107 million of this amount back into other early education programmes, with $91.8 million of this figure earmarked for low socioeconomic areas, home to many Maori and Pacifica children.
“Funding will continue for 20 hours ECE,” confirmed the minister in a letter to the NZ Childcare Association, “and will be extended to Playcentre and kohanga reo and five-year-olds from 1 July 2010. The six-hour daily limit will remain for the time being, as we focus on increasing participation of our target groups.”
In the “tight fiscal environment”, Anne Tolley continued, the Government had to balance the need to control future “unsustainable growth in costs” with its priority to increase opportunities for all children to participate in high-quality early childhood education.
Ina Holst
