EXCERPTS
Early childhood teachers facing "disillusion and burn out" say they deserve the same pay as their primary and secondary counterparts.
Early childhood education (ECE) teachers have been closely following the teachers' strikes and met on Sunday to discuss pay, ChildForum's Dr Sarah Alexander said.
Last month primary teachers accepted an offer giving them pay parity with their secondary colleagues and kindergarten teachers are currently negotiating their collective agreement, with parity the key issue on the table.
There are about 40,000 early childhood educators in New Zealand, but less than 5000 of those are kindergarten teachers. Securing parity across the sector was a "big question of fairness," Alexander said.
Alexander said ECE teachers were required to undergo the same "level and rigour" of training as primary and secondary teachers and must meet the same standards set out by the Teaching Council.
"A teacher is a teacher," she said.
"Working with young children is intellectually demanding and physically hard work, that requires tremendous knowledge, skill, sensitivity and care," she said.
In a recent ChildForum survey of 900 people in the sector, more than 90 per cent of respondents supported pay parity.
One respondent commented "I have taken the exact same [university] paper as someone who studied to be a primary teacher. How is it they are on more money and have less hours on the floor with children?"
The Ministry of Education has announced the new minimum rate for services to pay degree-qualified teachers will increase to $21.87 or $22.51 an hour from August 1, depending on qualification. This is an increase of 22 cents an hour.
Alexander said teachers were "struggling to live" on their wages, and with the national minimum wage now at $17.70 there was little incentive to get qualified.
If ECE teachers' pay wasn't addressed, children would pay the price, she said.
Already, many centres were reliant on relievers because of teacher shortages, she said. A roster of new faces every day was stressful for children and meant they could not form attachments.
The Ministry's Damian Edwards said as the Government subsidised (rather than fully fund) early learning services, it was up to services to decide how to spend and allocate resources.
However, he pointed to a recommendation in the draft Early Learning Strategic Plan for a mechanism that would enable "Government support for more consistent and improved teacher salaries and conditions".
This would likely require changes to the funding system, particularly because the current system has "played a role in enabling variation in pay and conditions across the sector", the plan said.
More should be known about this by the end of the year, when the finalised plan is expected to be released.