Is our publicly-funded early childhood education good enough for children? Results from the 2020 survey of teaching staff

Excerpts from highlights

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At the start of the 2020 school year, the ChildForum Office of Pre-Primary Education surveyed more than 4,000 teaching staff in ECE services across NZ. 
The survey found that:

• 26% of teaching staff could not endorse the quality of ECE (74% did).
• 29% of teaching staff did not have time to develop individual relationships with the children in their care.
• 11% of teaching staff from teacher-led centres worked in centres that usually operated at below the legal minimum adult-to-child ratio requirements.
• 50% of teaching staff from teacher-led centres undertook cleaning duties typically expected of a cleaner and when they were counted in the adult-to-child ratio.
• The allocation of non-contact time was variable, with 10% who were regular teaching staff having no non-contact time and 11% given 1 hour per week.

Unfortunately, many of these results are similar to previous surveys since 2014. This tells us that despite policy and regulatory changes in the sector over recent years there is still a long way to go.