November 2010, Issue 4

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 downloadable PDF of "Being Informed" Issue 4, 2010

In this Newsletter

1. How to Have Information about Early Child Education at Your Fingertips
2. Christmas Celebrations with Children
3. Survey on how things are in EC Services at the Moment and What’s Expected to Improve and Worsen
4. Loss of Funding Incentive to Employ More than 80% qualified/registered teachers
5. Annual Summit on Men in Early Childhood Education
6. ECE Peace in Education Network
7. Early Childhood Service Feature Articles
8. New Research Now Available!
9. More Stringent Requirements for Initial Teacher Education Providers and What Students Need to Know
10.   Is Degree level Teacher Training Necessary?
11.   Editorial:  The Government’s Taskforce on ECE and what this May Mean

1. How to Have Information about Early Child Education at Your Fingertips

ChildForum is NZ's first and much awaited for modern, inclusive, and non-partisan national organisation with a strong basis in early childhood expertise and practical experience.  If you want the latest and best information and fresh thinking about early child education and the early childhood sector at your fingertips then look to ChildForum. ChildForum brings together the latest news, research and expert analysis on a wide range of subjects in one easy to use place to save you searching lots of different websites to find what you need.  To find out more click on the following link: http://www.childforum.com/early-childhood-education.html   

Here’s an inexpensive idea for a Christmas present for staff and friends that will be greatly appreciated – give them 12 months membership of ChildForum!   All they need to do is apply for or take out a membership online or by completing a membership application form under their own name and ask for the invoice to be forwarded to you.

2. Christmas Celebrations with Children

We will shortly be adding a new theme page to www.childforum.com on Christmas with ideas, activities and recipes.  Please contact us with ideas and tips on celebrating Christmas with children  and your contribution will be acknowledged.  Send your ideas and info to share with others to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

3. Survey on how things are in EC Services at the Moment and What’s Expected to Improve and Worsen

Thank you to the so many people who have shared what’s happening in their service and their expectations of how things might change over the coming year.  The results of the survey will be discussed in the December issue of “Being Informed”.

4. Loss of Funding Incentive to Employ More than 80% qualified/registered teachers

During the past month ChildForum ran a quick poll from the home page of the childforum website, asking website visitors if centre funding should be linked to the percentage of staff with a qualification recognised for early childhood teaching.   A quarter of respondents said Yes (25% of votes) while the remainder (69%) voted No or Maybe (5%).  While the poll result appears clear cut, the number of votes received for this particular poll was small at only 91.  This small number of responses suggests there is not much interest in what centre funding is tied to or perhaps the low response was because people found the question confusing or had not thought about this before. 

In any case the poll has stimulated some thinking and feedback about how funding rates in the teacher-led sector in particular are structured.  We’ve received feedback from two emailers who asked what the alternatives might be – and here you may have some ideas to contribute, (e.g. funding could be paid at the same flat rate and then there would be no need for hourly staff counts, or perhaps funding could be tied to adult-child ratios with services with higher teacher-child ratio receiving more funding than services with lower teacher-child ratios …. what would you propose?) .

As the funding incentive to employ more than 80% qualified/registered teachers in teacher-led services will disappear next year, one-emailer has questioned what is likely to get the chop next.  This may take the form of doing away with the funding incentive to employ qualified/registered teachers completely if the government target for the teacher-lead sector to have 80% qualified/registered teachers is achieved in 2012.  A rumour doing the rounds is that the Government may look to make savings through taking kindergartens, or only all-day kindergartens out of the State Sector Act as the Kindergarten Collective Agreement impacts on funding rates and has flow on effects through the sector.  What might get the chop next remains to be seen?  If you have any concerns though one thing you might do is write to or ask the Minister of Education which may lead to an admission or denial – or approach opposition MPs who can ask questions directly in the House.

5. Annual Summit on Men in Early Childhood Education

The Summit for men and women will be held on Saturday and Sunday 19th - 20th March in South Canterbury.  Registration is: $40 for members of EC-MENz;  $50 for non EC Men members.  All meals except for breakfast will be provided. For more details visit: www.ecmenz.org

6. ECE Peace in Education Network

Recently a small number of early childhood practitioners met in the South to discuss Peace in Education in Early Childhood and have formed a group called “OPEN (Ōtautahi Peace in Education Network). If you are interested in issues such as restorative justice/practice, positive relationships, virtues project, values and character education, peace building/peace keeping/peace making etc, please email Ki Mansell at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to go on the OPEN email list.

7. Early Childhood Service Feature Articles

Check out the latest profiles of great early childhood services to be published on Kiwicare Preschool, the Supporting Parents Alongside Children’s Education Programme (SPACE), and Lake Terrace Preschool and Nursery.

8. New Research Now Available!

Volume 13, 2010 of the NZ Research in ECE Journal is now available online at www.childforum.com from the Research Network page.  ChildForum members can read all articles in this and other NZ Research journal issues on-line for free!
The journal is also available for purchase by libraries, early childhood services, organisations, and individuals from the ChildForum Store (http://www.childforum.com/store.html) and printed copies will be ready to be distributed soon.

We are very saddened by the sudden death of Kate Jarvis, who along with Susan Sandretto from the University of Otago wrote a brilliant article for this journal issue.  Kate’s death is a tremendous loss for early childhood and for early childhood research.

Here is a listing of the Contents of the Latest Journal publication

• Editorial by Andrew Gibbons and Helen Hedges (Lead editors for Volume 13)
• ‘You’re Allowed to Play’:  Children’s Rights at Playcentre by Sarah Te One
• Breaking out of the Child-rearing Cell:  Parental Outcomes from Participation in Japanese Playcentres by Junko Satoh and Suzanne Manning
• Perspectives on Inclusivity and Support in Organised and Informal Activities for Parents of Preschool Children by Sue Nichols
• The Power of Discursive Practices:  Queering or Heteronormalising? by Kate Jarvis and Susan Sandretto
• Innovation and Self-Organisation: The Documentation of a Central Character Story by Elaine Mayo, Kay Henson and Helen Smith
• Who is The Troll?  Children as Active Learners Presented as a Learning Story about the Troll from a Norwegian Barnehage by Liv Torunn Grindheim, Sidsel Hadler-Olsen and Modgunn Ohm
• From a Good Idea to a Robust Research Design:  A Discussion of Challenges in Designing Early Childhood Research for Beginning Researchers by Claire McLachlan
• Discovering Meanings in Research with Children by Karen Liang Guo
• Operationalising Social and Emotional Coping Competencies in Kindergarten Children by Jan Deans, Erica Frydenberg and Haruka Tsurutani
• Physical Activity in the Early Childhood Education Centre Environment by Patricia Lucas and Grant Schofield
• What Makes a Teacher-Parent and Family Partnership? By Bill Hagan, Lindy Austin and Marianne Mudaliar
• Teaching to Care:  Emotional Interactions between Preschool Children and their Teachers by Maria L. Ulloa, Ian M. Evans, and Fiona Parkes

9. More Stringent Requirements for Initial Teacher Education Providers and what Students Need to Know

Initial Teacher Education Providers may lose funding if they do not make the grade under new regulations being brought in by the Teachers Council.

The new Approval, Review and Monitoring Processes and Requirements for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Programmes come into effect next year bringing with them more stringent monitoring of the country’s ITE programmes. Teachers Council Director Dr Peter Lind says while the council itself doesn’t have the power to close down programmes; if it does not approve their graduates from those programmes they will not be accepted for provisional registration.

Given that Tertiary Education Commission funding is based on the fact that graduates can achieve registration, he says programmes which cannot guarantee this may lose their funding. Dr Lind says another focus of the new requirements is to encourage "collaborative partnerships between teacher educators (those teaching student teachers) and teacher practitioners (those teaching in schools and early childhood services)".

As part of this teachers will be involved in the approval and review of ITE programmes. All new ITE programmes will now have to be approved by the Teachers Council based on the report of an Approval Panel which will include two teachers from the sector in which the programme is focused.

Once approved ITE programmes will be monitored every year for the first one, three or four years depending on the length of the programme, and then every two years, based on a report by an appointed monitor and self-review by the provider. In the sixth year of its delivery each programme will again be reviewed by a panel including a teacher from the relevant sector.

The teachers for each panel will be drawn from a national core group set up by the Teachers Council. While the selection process has not yet been finalised, it is likely that the Council will call for nominations from each teaching sector (ECE, primary, secondary and Maori medium) with supporting CVs and references. A selection panel will then put forward recommendations to the Council which will make the final appointments. Dr Lind says the Council also plans to conduct a number of random national surveys of employers and graduates to identify benchmarks and baseline data of the perceptions of the quality of ITE programmes.

ITE providers will also be required to regularly survey their graduates and employers to obtain satisfaction levels. Practising teachers will also get a say in the quality of people accepted onto programmes. ITE providers will be expected to work locally with teachers during the selection process and conduct visual interviews with applicants either in person or using technology such as webcams to see how effectively they can communicate.

Dr Lind says the new requirements have been drafted to work alongside the new Graduating Teacher Standards and the Council has decided it is appropriate that the new standards should be "requirements" rather than "guidelines” because the Council wanted to be more explicit with providers about its expectations for programmes.

The new requirements will apply to all ITE providers including universities, polytechnics and private providers. The requirements will come into effect for all new programmes approved from January next year and for programmes reviewed from 1 January 2011. All programmes will have to meet the requirements by January 2013.

10. Is Degree level Teacher Training Necessary?

Training makes a difference for teacher understanding of pedagogy.  Do you know what the term pedagogy means?  See an article, just published, by Mary Moloney drawn from a PhD study on understandings of the concept of pedagogy in the Early Childhood Care and Education sector (ECCE) in Ireland. She interviewed university qualified teacher graduates, managers, practitioners and childcare students undertaking basic training.  Click here to go the study, or simply type in a search for it on the www.childforum.com website.  

11. Editorial:  The Government’s Taskforce on ECE

The setting up of a taskforce on ECE was formally announced by the Education Minister on 7th October 2010. While the brief for the taskforce seems to be wide and the questions it’s consulting on are enormously general in nature, the purpose of the taskforce to keep in mind is that it must consider how to build in greater efficiencies and reduce, or slow down, the speed with which government expenditure on ECE has increased in recent years.

For those services, teachers and families not currently worried about funding cutbacks this taskforce is likely to be of little interest to them. But teacher-led services in particular and those with highly qualified staff are likely to be worried they could lose more funding, as anything is possible in the new funding environment. All families and early childhood services however should take an interest for the reason that the government is signalling that it desires to determine for services and families the ‘future state’ of early childhood education and how this might be achieved over only 3 – 5 years (which might mean a lot of change over a short time span).

The taskforce has been given a budget of $150,000.  Some might see this as money well spent if the taskforce makes original and helpful recommendations that are responded to by government and which lead to improvements in ECE. Others might view this as money that could have been better spent in other ways e.g. such as forming a think tank of sector representatives, teacher, and family representatives. 

The setting up of an ECE taskforce  was likely to happen for three reasons.  First, the level of ECE spending is a headache to the present National-led government wanting to exercise restraint in spending and make savings. Second, the Government so far has got away with making spending cuts and changes in the ECE sector but with election year coming up it knows it has to find a way to make further changes more palatable.  And third setting up taskforces is something that this National Government seems to like to do. There’s been for example the 2025 taskforce chaired by Dr Don Brash to provide recommendations to improve productivity and close the income gap with Australia. Some other taskforces include:  a building and construction sector taskforce, a regulatory responsibility taskforce to improve the quality of law-making, a taskforce on whanau centred initiatives, a crown research institute taskforce, a wool taskforce to restore profitability to the wool sector, a capital market development taskforce, and a taskforce on sexual violence.

The 20 Hours Free ECE policy was first developed to provide access to free ECE for families with 3 and 4 year old children at community-based teacher-led services.  An intensive campaign by the Early Childhood Council and criticism of the free ECE funding level by some providers including the Auckland Kindergarten Association, saw the then Labour Government change its mind to allow services to levy optional charges and non-community owned services to also access the 20 hour funding rates. As well as the offer of cheaper ECE/childcare providing an incentive for parents to leave their child longer in ECE, many early childhood services extended the length of sessions or adjusted minimum hours of required child attendance in order to remain profitable.  A massive increase in child funded hours has been a major factor in the blowout on ECE spending. The National party in opposition promised to extend 20 hours funding to parent-led services, playcentre and also kohanga reo – which it has done. And it has also dropped the word ‘free’ from the 20 Hours Free ECE.  Now it is looking at ways to better control or reduce spending in the teacher-led sector.  This perhaps gives a strong hint as to the government’s possible intention for the ‘future state’ of the shape of early childhood education.

The government appears to want to work as quickly as possible towards slowing down the growth in the volume of child funded hours and reducing other big budget items (e.g. the funding incentive for qualified/registered teacher employment). This could be why membership of the taskforce is weighted toward management/administration expertise within and outside of ECE.  There are no representatives from parent-led groups or for early childhood teachers. Online blogs and media statements suggest many ECE groups had not been informed that the taskforce was being formed.

Should more funding be moved away from teacher-led services, some services will rise to the challenge of less funding and cope well but many services may not. The outcome might be more pressure on the sustainability of teacher-led services who find they need to increase fees and who face declining rolls. We might see more families overtime deciding to reduce their reliance on teacher-led ECE and becoming more involved in a parent-led service, or looking to granny or other parents in their neighbourhood to share childcare.

On the ECE Taskforce the Early Childhood Council has a presence while other groups such as the NZ Childcare Assn, NZ Kindergarten Inc, NZEI, the TKR Trust, the NZ Playcentre Fed, and Montessori Aotearoa NZ, etc, do not.  The terms of reference for taskforce members are that they must each: “… act in the interests of all stakeholders including children and parents, and should not represent any particular organisation or voice.”  This doesn’t seem to be the case. Peter Reynolds who joined the ECC as its new CEO this year and has no prior ECE background to bring to the Taskforce, publicly announced online “I cannot guarantee that the ECC will get its way on all Taskforce matters, but you can guarantee that its voice will be heard loud and clear on all issues of concern to its members".  As an employee of the ECC the CEO must report through to the ECC executive. The ECC has surveyed/polled its members twice and the government’s ECE Taskforce members have met twice so far.  Other early childhood groups and interests not represented on the taskforce may feel it is unfair that the ECC can do this and protest or slam the report of the Taskforce. 

On the other hand, realising that the Minister may choose not to heed whatever the taskforce comes up with in recommendations other interest groups and stakeholders might think what does it really matter whose interests are, or are not, represented on the taskforce.  They might interpret the Minister’s appointment of the Early Childhood Council’s CEO and the General Manager of NZ’s largest Kindergarten Association and the largest ECE service in NZ to the ECE Taskforce as nothing more and nothing less than government’s way of keeping them busy and unable to comment publicly while on the taskforce.

The ECE taskforce’s  recommendations will be given no more serious consideration by the Education Minister than she “would with any expert, independent advice from the education sector”.  What this means is that the Education Minister may accept or ignore some, or all, of the taskforce’s recommendations.  So there could well still be a place for public opinion and advocacy to influence policy setting decisions.  Professional and expert commentary and analysis might still be sought or listened to by the Minister independent of anything the ECE taskforce puts forward.  

ECE Taskforce Membership

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