An open letter from a Kindergarten to the Minister of Education

We are writing this open letter to highlight the inadequate service provided by the Ministry of Education for children with special and/or high additional needs. It is our intention to highlight the consistent inadequacies so that this area receives attention and resources to actively improve outcomes for children, parents and whānau.

Firstly, some background. We work with a culturally diverse and transient community with children generally starting at the age of three. We currently have seven children under the services of Special Education (now called Learning Support). At present, 41 children of our roll of 60 are classed as ‘priority learners’ and many present challenging behaviours. We are a proactive and experienced teaching team with skills to help support children with these behaviours and the associated issues for them, their parents and whānau.

The Ministry of Education has an early intervention team, however, from our experience it appears woefully understaffed and ill-equipped to meet the needs of the children who need and deserve additional support. The average wait for a child to be assessed is six to eight months; some children wait for months longer than that. This imposed delay makes a mockery of the term “early intervention” and valuable time in supporting these children is lost. The Ministry does not give explanations for the delays in its assessment processes and support services and we have heard that staff are forbidden from talking to teachers about its services. Consequently, teachers are left speculating as to whether the delays are due to funding, a lack of staff, constant restructuring or some greater agenda such as deliberately not fulfilling the early intervention role in order to lower the expectations and place responsibility onto early childhood services, parents and whānau.

As a Kindergarten team we spend a considerable amount of time form filling, emailing, liaising, and phoning to gain access to support for our children; in many instances more time is spent trying to access services than receiving them. From our experience there seems to be an attitude that the provision of appropriate services is some sort of favour for children, rather than their right to receive an education. Not surprisingly, we know of services that choose not to refer children who need additional help because they have little faith that their referrals will be addressed in a timely manner, or at all.

Once a need is acknowledged and on the rare occasion when funding for an education support worker is approved, the Ministry can take a long time to employ someone. This is perhaps compounded by unstable work patterns, and inadequate hours for educational support workers. We have had a support worker (from an adjacent suburb) who has spent more on the bus fare than she has been paid for her role. These employment practices mean that a high staff turnover is inevitable, so when someone leaves the support can be disrupted indefinitely.

We have had situations where the Ministry has removed a child from the waiting list without consultation after ringing a family with poor English and determining that they no longer wanted the service when that was certainly not the case. Despite our best efforts we have had children who have needed additional support whilst at kindergarten who have only been able to access this after arriving at school, meaning that any educational issues that could have been overcome at an early stage were not addressed.

The staff that we deal with in the early intervention team who visit our kindergarten are competent, caring and professional—but they are working in a broken system. We continue to try and work with the Ministry of Education and we continually apologise to families but we know what a good service would be and we call on the Ministry to take steps to provide it.

Recently, the Minister of Education Nikki Kaye said: “This Government is committed to supporting all our schools and early learning services to deliver the best education possible to ensure that every young New Zealander has the opportunity to achieve.” The Ministry of Education needs to live up to this commitment.

The teaching team at Newtown Kindergarten

ENDS

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