Strong rumours have it that David Seymour will be making a pretty devastating announcement about the staff of Kindergartens, possibly by the end of this week. And it really will be history repeating itself.

David Seymour wants to take Kindergarten teachers out of the state sector.

This has happened before, on 29 April 1997, when then State Services Minister Jenny Shipley overnight introduced a Bill to remove Kindergarten Teachers from the state sector, passing it under Urgency (sound familiar?) the very next day, 30 April 1997. Then Associate Minister of Education Brian Donnelly (NZ First) claimed they were removing an anomaly in ECE and that this move put Kindergartens on an even footing with other ECE providers.

But Kindergartens were never meant to be like the other ECE providers. Its sessional nature was not like the model of day care or parental play based ECE offered by other ECE providers.

In March 2000, legislation to return Kindergarten teachers to the state sector was introduced by then Education Minister Trevor Mallard, fulfilling a promise Labour made in 1997 when they were removed. Mr Mallard said:

“The previous Government saw early childhood education as a business. We see it as an integral part of the education system and we want to help as many children as possible have access to quality early childhood education.

“Teachers are the key to that quality. By taking responsibility for the terms under which they are employed, the Government is taking leadership for setting benchmarks for standards. We will be making advancements on issues like the provision and co-ordination of professional development.”

So why do we think that Mr Seymour, the current Associate Minister of Education with responsibility for Early Childhood Education, is preparing to announce removing Kindergarten teachers from the state sector yet again?

The Early Childhood Council.

The Early Childhood Council, who speak for the owners of ECE centres, has the ear of the Associate Minister of Education, David Seymour. Apparently Simon Laube, the current CEO of the Early Childhood Council, worked in the Minister of Education’s office between October 2012 and August 2016, as a Principal Advisor for Partnership Schools Kura Hourua between November 2016 and September 2017 and as a Senior Manager for Partnership Schools between November 2017 and June 2019. At some point prior to the 2020 election, Mr Laube began working in David Seymour's office while ACT was in opposition. We can surmise that Mr Laube and Minister Seymour have a working relationship.

The Early Childhood Council made a submission to the government’s review of regulations in ECE, specifically requesting that Kindergarten teachers be again removed from the State Sector Act.

However, before this submission was made, only 15% of the members, who are the people who own ECE centres, were consulted on the substance of the submission - so how does this represent the owners of ECE centres, let alone the workforce?

The Kindergarten Association’s spokesperson Amanda Coulston released this press release, Early Childhood Submission a Cynical Attempt to Drive Down Standards, on the 16 of September. These paragraphs stood out to me:

Kindergartens Aotearoa says private centres are trying to use the government’s review of regulations to drive down quality and reduce teachers’ pay so they can make greater profits from taxpayer funds.

The Early Childhood Council which represents mainly private centres has called for the government to scrap pay parity rules and reduce teacher-to-child ratio requirements.

The Council has also called for the kindergarten movement to be removed from the state sector.

Kindergarten teachers have had pay parity with primary teachers for over 20 years, and that has been the mechanism for other early childhood teachers to achieve pay parity which the Council now wants to remove.

“Removing kindergarten teachers from the state sector will see the loss of the anchor that enables pay parity to be extended to the wider ECE sector” says KA spokesperson Amanda Coulston, “this is a cynical attempt to drive down standards and drive down quality. Research shows that our youngest and most vulnerable children actually need more qualified teachers and better ratios, not less. The ECC is putting profit before child wellbeing”.

We know that Mr Seymour is taking his lead from Mr Laube because he has already implemented the call to scrap pay parity rules for ECE relief and fixed term teachers. See this article from 4 September, Relief teachers cut from early childhood centre pay parity scheme:

The government has cut relief teachers from early childhood centre pay parity arrangements.

Early learning services that agree to pay their qualified teachers the same as kindergarten and school teachers qualify for a higher rate of government subsidy.

But from October, that commitment to pay parity would only apply to permanent staff, not relievers.

The government said the change would reduce administration costs.

Employer groups the Early Childhood Council and Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand welcomed the change.

They said teachers had left permanent roles because they could earn more as relievers.

However, the Kindergarten Association and ECE relief teachers say this will cause the ECE teacher shortage to become a bigger problem. In this article, Early childhood relief teachers face big drop in income, teachers said that they left full-time ECE teaching due to high workloads, poor conditions, workplace bullying and burnout, not because being a relief teacher was more lucrative, because being a relief teacher is NOT a lucrative income as your sick leave pay and holiday pay is included in your hourly rate. Reducing their income was more likely to drive them out of even being an ECE reliever and certainly not back into the teaching space full-time.

Teacher Amy Dean said she left a permanent early childhood teaching job 18 months ago because she was burnt out by the stress of the work.

She told RNZ relieving worked well for her and had reignited her love of teaching, but now one of the companies that organised her relief placements wanted to cut her rate by $8 an hour because of the rule change announced last month.

"It's quite a lot of money. It's about $280 a week less if I take the $8 pay cut, if I work about 30-hours roughly," she said.

Dean said with the cost-of-living crisis, she did not know how she could justify losing that much income each week.

Centre owners hoped the change would prompt relievers to return to permanent roles, but Dean said working conditions in some centres were not good enough.

This change was made purely at the request of the Early Childhood Council, who represent ECE centre owners (but remember only 15% of ECE centre owners were consulted before this submission went in), and no teachers were consulted.

We also have David Seymour’s press release from 5 September where he made these interesting claims:

“We have heard reports from centres around the country where teachers and carers are spending their time dealing with regulators and writing reports and plans on absurd things like the risk of apples falling from a tree in the playground, the first aid certificate being hung on the right-hand side of the doorframe instead of above it, or a train driver honking the train horn at the children as the train drives past every morning to the delight of the children but the chagrin of noise pollution police.”

Finally, during her address to the NZEI Te Riu Roa Hui-a-Tau on Wednesday 2 October, Stephanie Mills (the NZEI Te Riu Roa National Secretary) said that the Institute fully expected David Seymour would take Kindergarten staff out of the state sector very soon.

It was also very telling that during Minister of Education Erica Stanford's address to NZEI Te Riu Roa Hui-a-Tau attendees earlier on the same day, she did not mention the early childhood sector once. When questions were asked of her about the cuts to pay parity for ECE relief teachers, Erica was emphatic her only responsibilities in ECE were the curriculum and everything else was under David Seymour's Associate Minister of Education delegations.

So where does Labour stand on the possibility of the Kindergarten teachers being removed from the state sector?

Labour's Education spokesperson, Jan Tinetti, says Labour opposes removing Kindergarten teachers from the state sector. Pay parity between Kindergarten teachers and primary and secondary teachers is important to maintain qualifications, pay and conditions in Kindergartens, and by extension, the rest of the ECE sector. In recent years, Labour has worked with NZEI Te Riu Roa and centre owners to improve the pay of teachers in the private ECE settings and attempting to get pay equity with Kindergarten teachers. If Kindergarten teachers are removed from the state sector, this will allow the pay, conditions and even the qualification of teachers in the whole ECE sector to erode. Labour remains committed to pay equity in ECE as they believe a qualified, registered ECE teacher will provide the best start to a child's formal education journey.

After publishing this post I was able to make contact with the Green Party Education spokesperson, Lawrence Xu-Nan who said:

We strongly oppose any changes to the position of kindergartens within our public education system, and the harmful effects it will have for our tamariki, our kaiako, and their communities.

Kindergartens play a vital role in the education system of Aotearoa New Zealand. As part of the state sector, kindergartens have been a prime example of the kind of quality teaching and learning we can achieve in early childhood education. Part of this is because of the ownership model which removes the profit motive and means that educators can focus on children’s learning and wellbeing. Qualified and respected teachers with good working conditions are able to implement Te Whāriki, and can truly put the children at the centre of their work.

Considering David Seymour seems uninterested in listening to teachers themselves, has a huge disdain for the teacher unions and believes the Early Childhood Council speaks for all ECE teachers including Kindergarten teachers rather than NZEI Te Riu Roa or even the Kindergarten Association, we believe it is a fairly safe assumption he will announce taking Kindergarten teachers out of the state sector… a return to a failed near 30 year old policy.

References:

Note: These references have been included to provide background and demonstrate links between key personalities involved.

Kindergartens and their removal from the State Sector Act (1998): https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/nzaroe/article/download/1161/966/1266#:~:text=But%20the%20new%20Bill%20was,and%20funding%20kindergarten%20teachers'%20salaries.