Labour under pressure on disastrous ECE policy

Stuff reports:

Associate Education Minister Jo Luxton is reportedly looking into the possibility of an independent review of early childhood education funding and the sector’s concerns about the Government’s $1.2 billion expansion to 20-hours-free childcare.

It comes after almost the entire ECE sector signed a letter to Luxton and Education Minister Jan Tinetti, saying Budget 2023′s flagship policy to extend 20-hours free childcare per week to 2-year-olds is completely unworkable and will degrade the quality of childcare, limit the stock of educators and increase the hundreds of services shutting up shop in recent years.

Luxton hosted nine ECE providers at Parliament yesterday and heard from each about their concerns about the policy. Tinetti was supposed to attend but didn’t. It was understood another engagement ran late and she could not make the meeting.

The sector’s problems with the policy centred around the funding for the 20-hours-free being based on a 1:10 teacher to child ratio. Many childcare centres operate at ratios between 1:4 to 1:8

It’s a real cluster**k. The intent of the policy is good, but they rushed the policy as they were desperate to counter National’s policy, and didn’t do any sector consultation, or consider critical details such as the funding ratio.