MESSAGE CEO's People will be reading this issue as they head into the ECC’s Annual Conference at the Napier War Memorial – I hope all things are going according to plan and gatherings can still happen. We planned the conference at the height of COVID-19 in 2021. I remember proposing that ECC select a venue in Auckland because it would be a lot easier for more people to get there. At that time, a large gathering in Auckland was not really appealing to anybody – least of all the Aucklanders I spoke to. It is funny how much can change in such a short time. As Chief Executive I am in contact with centre managers every day – at some point everyone gets confronted by difficult or challenging issues that may be outside their control or comfort zone. Sometimes people just need to double-check something to ensure they are on the right track. Our organisation has so many great people working so hard every day. The ability to run a centre is a very high capability and intensive responsibility: with the complexities of regulation and funding, not to mention the actual management job in terms of supporting, developing and leading a high-performance teaching team, and the wider centre operations that many take for granted. As the seasons change, and with COVID-19 infection levels receding (but a new variant in the pipeline – again!) we will be seeing a couple of things. The social impact from placing New Zealand into a disruptive series of lockdowns will start to be unwound. It will become clearer whether the patterns of low attendance in early learning start to improve. If not, intervention will be required. Increasing participation rates in New Zealand was a key objective when I started out in the Education Ministry in 2010. I recall the Briefing to the Incoming Minister advised that participation was nearly sorted and that the next great challenge for ECE would be raising quality. However, as recently as July 2022, early learning registered an all-time low attendance rate of 50% (aside from other lows during actual lockdowns). What is keeping children away from early learning now? Some parents remain hesitant – this hasn’t changed since 2021 but maybe it isn’t improving either. A legacy of the COVID Protection Framework will be the recommendation that parents should keep their children home where they can. That word “should” was a mistake when it was used and got removed quite quickly. It created an awkward sense of guilt for those who felt comfortable that attendance was safe. But the correct “old” Government advice was actually “parents/caregivers who can supervise their children at home are encouraged to do so” [my emphasis]. In the last round of COVID Protection Framework changes this advice changed and is now: “all children can attend according to their normal attendance pattern, eg. education and care centre Mon-Wed, playcentre on Thursday and playgroup on Friday”. Nobody ever did get through to parents with clear advice about the risks and benefits of attending ECE during the pandemic. The work the ECC did with the team of health professionals was very useful I think – where we presented the research about the health risks to young children. The Statement of Public Health Objectives in Early Learning can be found here, https://www.ecc.org.nz/ publicresources. This led to valuable work that is seeing ECC support better ventilation in centres. But with ECC’s limited reach it only got to early learning centres – and not all of them would have appreciated its usefulness or significance. And at the time centres were being jolted by other changes that would have seemed more urgent so I completely understand if that passed many by. People react more strongly when you try to take something away. So the introduction of tough restrictions (like lockdowns) meant families and centres had to adjust their behaviours – and do so on the government’s timelines. But the same thing does not happen when you relax them. People don’t feel the same compulsion to comply. Where the advice to parents changed to encourage them to resume their normal attendance – did any parent actually get that memo? I don’t think so. ECC monitored no advice or publicity from the government on that change. Parents do not monitor the Ministry's website. It is a rather fundamental matter and while ECC can be clear about it to centres – how do centres get parents to poke their heads back in their door to hear their advice? I know there are many early learning centres that have successfully September 2022 { 8 }
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