Our position on the Regulations and Licensing Criteria

Our position is that regulations are an essential tool to safeguard children's right to safe care and a good standard of education.

The Ministry of Education has begun a review and overhaul of the early childhood education regulatory system.  We have advocated for regulations to be strengthened and lifted.  We support the review which started near the end of 2020 and is expected to go through to the end of 2023. 

> Go to details about the regulatory review

What we are doing 

Representatives of service providers are typically viewed by the Ministry of Education and by Governments as the majority stakeholder.  But we believe that children and families are the majority stakeholder.  Therefore, someone else other than those who are expected to implement the regulations (i.e. service providers and owners) should be involved in helping to define the regulations. That's where we come in because we do not represent the political or financial interests of any service provider group.  

We are involved in the Ministry's Early Learning Regulatory Advisory Group.  We provide analysis of changes that the Ministry proposes to make, helping both Ministry officials and our members to think more critically about these.  We explain regulatory changes to assist services and people to better understand and adjust to these.  In the end though it is the decision of Ministry officials to make as to what standards they think the government will be prepared to support politically and financially, and it is also up to Cabinet to approve or not any changes in legislation that the Ministry proposes.