Meaningful Changes For Home-based ECE Providers Welcomed By ECC

Home-based Early Childhood Education care providers could have folded completely within six years, significantly reducing parents’ diversity of choice and driving home-based provision underground, if changes weren’t made, says the Early Childhood Council.

“Home-based services were shackled with impractical and illogical new teacher qualification standards by the previous Government, but today’s announcement will provide them with relief,” said ECC CEO Simon Laube.

“The previous government gave the sector a constant flow of new regulation, without meaningful consultation with ECE providers to test if their new ideas would actually work. The effects of over-regulation are still being felt by parents in 2024, through increasing childcare fees and loss of access due to services closing.”

If this home-based funding rule had not been changed, based on the current rate of decline of home-based providers, the total number of home-based providers in New Zealand would have reached zero by about 2030, significantly reducing parent choice and the diversity of ECE options for children. Home-based is a small but highly flexible part of the ECE sector, with about 5% of total enrolments (10,514 children in 2023).

Not all children benefit from centre-based care options or prefer them, with homebased provision limited to small groups of four or fewer children per home. Some currently licenced home-based arrangements could have gone underground when they couldn’t comply, with no regulatory oversight to safeguard children and undermining the educational benefits purchased.

“The relief for home-based providers was a critical fix, not just a ‘nice to have’.”

“Seriously flawed funding conditions still exist for over 2,600 education and care services in New Zealand represented by the ECC. Under current Pay Parity policies, many small centres are non-viable or heading that way, centres with the most highly experienced teaching teams get financially penalised and experienced teachers applying for jobs get discriminated against because providers aren’t accurately compensated for employing them.”

“More and more ECC members are warning us they’re close to failing. Education and care providers desperately need their funding conditions reviewed, or the existential threat to home-based care, which is 5% of the sector, will hit the majority of New Zealand ECE providers, which is 70% plus,” said Simon Laube.

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