Election 2020 - Party Policies - Education - Early Childhood Education
25th Jul 20, 5:55am
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Early Childhood Education
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- Early Childhood Education will continue to function as it presently does, with funding disbursed through Student Education Accounts. The funding available for Early Childhood Education will be equivalent to that currently available through the 20 hours free program.
- Read more here.
- Re-establish the target of 100% qualified staff in teacher-led Early Childhood Education centres, and reinstate the funding to support this.
- Improve child:teacher ratios, with a priority for under 2's.
- Create models to share best-practice and professional development between centres, including reinstating the Centres of Innovation program.
- Set maximum overall child numbers that no centre can expand beyond.
- Encourage clustering of Early Childhood Education Centres with nearby Primary Schools to enhance the transition to school, including meetings between Early Childhood and New Entrants teachers.
- Support a diversity of models for immersion learning in Te Reo Māori and Pacific languages, and resource these appropriately.
- Ensure funding for 20 hours early Childhood Education accurately reflects the cost to parents and centres.
- Read more here and here.
Not yet available on their website.
- Progressively improve the adult-to-child ratio for under two year olds in ECE.
- Strengthen spot-check monitoring of ECE services so parents can be confident when they drop their children off at their chosen ECE centre.
- Improve parents’ access to information about the quality of ECE services on offer in their area, and ensure parents are directly informed of any concerns about the quality of their child’s ECE service.
- Work with ECE providers to ensure the ECE funding system is fair, simple and transparent and supports both quality and parental choice.
- Read more here.
- Review the adult to infant (under 2s) staffing ratio in ECE centres as an urgent health and safety matter.
- Work with the sector to amend relevant criteria to ensure an increased ability of isolated rural communities to participate in early childhood education such as Playcentre and Mobile Kindergartens.
- Support the HIPPY organisation in their provision of early childhood education opportunities for 4 and 5 year olds and their families.
- Establish a fund for research into best practice and innovation in New Zealand early childhood education.
- Work to bring more ECE Centres into the Learning Support Delivery Model so as to better support those children needing early learning support.
- Build on the pilots to shift from a “refer out and wait” early intervention system for young children who need learning support to a “send in the experts and deliver” model of early intervention.
- Pursue the opportunity to bring ECE Centres into local clusters or Kahui Ako to better support the transition of all students into the compulsory sector.
- Work with Playcentre to recalibrate their funding model to recognise that they provide support around parental education while also teaching how children learn through play.
- Seek to partner with Playcentre in rural communities so that Justice can use their facilities during weekends and after hours for supervised parent / child visits to address the lack of these facilities in small towns.
- Read more here.
- To implement a ‘quality-based contracting model’ which reflects quality holistic real-world learning rather than the current licensing model under which providers can get away with providing substandard care.
- To bring back free play time, outdoor play and risky and loose parts play to support development. We want to bring back the grass, the vines, rolling down hills, climbing trees and muddy puddles for their enjoyment and physical development.
- To return power to educators for making qualified informed decisions about education, enrichment and community involvement.
- To implement a model of partnership between early childhood services and families by allowing teachers, parents/whānau and student teachers to be equally involved in the development of children.
- To improve the transition systems between pre-school and school by encouraging schools to hire early childhood teachers for years 1 & 2 at least.
- To delay formal structured learning until age seven; instead focussing on letting children embrace curious learning for strong social and emotional development which sets them up for success in the later school years. This approach is considered best practice with more than 31 countries around the world delaying structured learning until 6/7 years.
- To require government agencies to talk to each other when assessing early childhood issues, education and care.
- To raise the quality of early childhood education in disadvantaged communities by creating culturally sensitive, community-based connections between centres and families.
- Read more here.
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1 Comments
@Jessica TOP has a comprehensive ECE policy (https://www.top.org.nz/early_years_learning) - would you be interested in a summary for this page?
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