Ministry Of Education Fails The Very Young

I am a teacher, researcher, advocate and founder of Teachers Advocacy Group (TAG).

When the Ministry of Education fails to advocate for quality, it falls to parents to step into that role and use their significant clout as consumers when assessing what ECE service to use. Parents need to see through the marketing and the assurances of those selling ECE, and notice how an early childhood centre is set up and staffed.

What do parents need to notice? They need to really pay attention to how many children are in the care of each teacher. This is the ratio of teachers to children. They need to talk to teachers about what it’s like working in the centre – have they worked here long? What about the other teachers?

And they need to build that awareness on the foundation knowledge that minimum regulations set by the Ministry of Education produce miserable environments for early childhood teachers and young children, especially for children under two – those that require the most consistent care and attention.

Let me walk you through a scenario – a true scenario – about how the Ministry and its staff are unable to ensure quality experiences for very young children.

The centre is in the process of being licensed but has been open for a year. The centre already has a reputation for high turnover of teaching staff which means unstable relationships with a stream of relieving teachers appearing and disappearing in children’s lives. The workload on regular teachers increases every time a teacher comes and then goes.

The staffing difficulties are especially evident in the ‘nursery’ which is a dedicated space for children aged less than two years old. In that space, there is one teacher with six children. Two of those children are babies – one is eight months old, and the other is nine months old. This ratio of 1 adult to 6 children is outside of regulations, but only barely. A centre can meet minimum standards with 1 adult to five children aged less than two years old.

Imagine it. One adult with five very little humans.

Any teacher can tell you this situation is unsustainable, and any parent looking in can recognise that even with a qualification in ECE teaching, that one human adult is unable to attend to five children at once. For example, if the adult is changing a nappy or settling a child to sleep, the other four children are left unattended. This centre was outside of regulations because there was only one teacher in the nursery – there should be at least two.

Next door in the room dedicated for ‘older children’ – those aged between two and five years – there are two teachers with 20 children. This meets minimum teacher: child ratios but is again a miserable, low quality and unsustainable environment for teachers and children alike.

Think about it. There are frequent times when there is one teacher supervising 20 children. One teacher is changing a nappy, dealing with a toileting accident or injury, or distressed children. Or needs to go the toilet themselves.

Enter the Ministry of Education. The situation is recognised, and advice given. The advice is for all children to be in one room.

The teachers are dumbfounded. Now there are 26 children aged eight months to five years old with three teachers. If the manager is included in the ratios, perhaps this meets minimum standards, but the manager is only available to cover staff breaks. We have been told by the Ministry in no uncertain terms that counting a teacher in the ratio who is not in the presence of children, is misapplying the regulations.

If the infant teacher is changing or settling or feeding a baby, there are still five children aged under two, plus 20 older children under the care and supervision of the other two staff. Plus we now have the littlest children being run over by the older ones.

The stress is bad for the children and it is bad for the teachers. Teachers hyper-vigilant all day, trying to attend to children in these conditions, become exhausted. And this is not an isolated or unusual story.

Instead of giving advice that might work on paper, but is easily recognised as poor quality ECE, Ministry of Ed staff need to be saying to their superiors, ‘Our numbers don’t work. They don’t work for teachers. And they don’t work for children’.

When I alerted the MoE to a similar situation in 2017, the ministry’s frontline person insisted this was all within regulation and no action would be taken. I insisted this arrangement was very stressful for children and was deeply stressful and noisy for teachers. “This is regulatory,” I was told. “Even if it doesn’t make sense?” I asked. “Point me to those responsible for the regulations,” I said. No response ever given.

ECE teachers have called for and got a Regulation Review, but none of the experts – the teachers whose workdays are shaped by the regulations – were included in that review. The same foxes are in charge of the henhouse.

So this is a plea to parents: Ask teachers what the conditions are in the service you leave your children, particularly your infants. If there’s high staff turnover, be particularly cautious.

You probably love the person you are leaving your precious baby with, but is that person getting breaks? Is she overworked and under-supported? If she is under stress, your baby will be under stress as well.

Look for calm environment where teachers and children are thriving. Don’t settle for anything less.

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