Swings + Roundabouts Spring 2021

ECC represents: ● ● Over 1350 centre member organisations (including private and community) ● ● Over 80% of centre owners who are qualified/registered teachers ● ● 30% of members who are community owned and operated ● ● Over 16,000 ECE teachers ● ● Over 67,000 tamariki ● ● Over 500,000 voting parents, whanau, community relentless drive has only energised the ECC more to achieve all that lies ahead for our members. Sue will continue to support ECC through our transition over the next several months into 2022, so we’ll maintain an ongoing connections with her moving forward. Lockdown Alongside our leadership transition, your Board and national office team have navigated the Delta outbreak’s crippling blow to our sector and the NZ economy that triggered lengthy Level 4 and 3 lockdowns, following the first round in 2020. I’ve listened to several hundred member voices through this time, and it was comforting to know you navigated this difficult period with more confidence, understanding and knowledge than in 2020, and your teaching and whānau communities shared a similarly increased level of understanding, staying committed to navigating this time safely and sensibly to support one another. We’ve led from the front, challenging, correcting and clarifying the MoE’s mixed messages for our membership and sector, and telling your story in national TV, radio and print media. The ECC was instrumental in triggering a further $433 million into NZ businesses in the second round of Resurgence Support Payments, helping hundreds of our members support their staff and meet their centres’ critical running costs. Communications Throughout this recent journey – clear, concise and regular communication with you has been key in a two way flow, informing you as well as listening to your needs. Our external communication channels with the media also continue to position ECC as their preferred voice of reason, pragmatism and sensible solutions. Our sole focus remains ensuring our members receive the highest and most influential levels of advocacy, representation and support. Sue has been playing a big part in this in recent times, and our Board members have all stepped up to volunteer their personal time to take on MOE forums, member queries, and PD workshops, while knowing the backbone of ECC - our National Office team - are always there to help you all too. Rest assured this will continue under Simon’s leadership. Closing the Pay Parity gap I was reflecting after our initial meeting with Education Minister Chris Hipkins and his team in August about how the ECC has consistently advocated for sensible, pragmatic and workable solutions for high quality outcomes in ECE, and giving providers the means to pay teachers what they’re worth. We presented low hanging fruit solutions (albeit with bad timing one week before the surprise Level 4 lockdown!) to the Minister, including: 01. Helping centres maintain their funding band status, and help with pay parity affordability by simply valuing Non- Contact hours as Contact, just like the rest of the education sector, for RS7 calculations, and 02. Funding centres in sharper funding bands to reflect a truer sense of their performance. For example centres at say 92% qualified teachers would be funded at 92% and not just 80% for their investments and intentions to aspire to highest performance levels. Conversely, a centre at say 78% qualified teachers would be funded at 78% and not made to literally “fall off the cliff” financially for not meeting 80% qualified staff during the worst ECE teacher shortage crisis we have ever seen. Our modelling shows centres would receive approximately 4%-14% more funding at each RS7 round with this sharper funding band model We welcome this government beginning to invest in paying teachers what they deserve, but the fish hooks are incredibly frustrating. We have plenty of questions about becoming embedded in the KCTA six step pay scale (and possibly other undisclosed employment conditions), when we have over 30 years of audited evidence across thousands of centres that the government’s bulk funding has always been invested into our teaching colleagues. Why not simply raise the per child subsidy rates by 5.1% (which is the $170m over 4 years) in January 2022 and utilise the existing attestation mechanism in our RS7 to make sure this goes directly to our teachers like we‘ve proven for over 30 years? Is locking centres into a KCTA model a hidden agenda? The government’s ever-widening gap of over 16% between funding rates and teacher wages is arguably the sector’s biggest concern right now. We need to close that gap . Asking centres to pay more in a locked KCTA model without a matching funding rate increase is going to cripple hundreds of centres and leave the rest in a rapid erosion of outcomes for everyone. I don’t need to explain what that will look like – higher parent fees, operating at minimum ratios, fewer qualified teachers in each centre, all which adversely impact teaching environments, families and most of all, future trajectories of our tamariki. That’s our message of fair, pragmatic, and sensible solutions to a decade of underfunding for our sector – it’s just become more urgent and we will not stop escalating this . Finally… As an organisation that promotes quality early childhood education, and champions those who provide it, we’re getting impatient to get the changes our sector desperately needs. New Zealand ECE already delivers world-class early learning - imagine what it could do with more fair, pragmatic and low hanging fruit solutions that we know would unlock blockades and barriers to build on world-class excellence? Ngā mihi nui Dr Darius Singh ECC President September 2021 { 9 }