Learning from Disabled Children – How Early Childhood Professionals Can Help

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Children with disabilities in early childhood education services with wheelchair.

Learning from Disabled Children. By Tim Kahn

This article on Learning from Disabled Children is written from a UK perspective. Some terminology may not be commonplace in New Zealand but should still be apparent from the context.

Disabled, but not really so different

When our daughter, Sarah, was very young, we used to visit our friend Mi

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Pay parity for early childhood teachers and Minister Seymour's view

David Seymour responds to our concerns about pay parity myth and its influence on decisions not to support ECE teacher pay parity

Associate education minister David Seymour has responded to concerns from the Office of Early Childhood Education about claims circulating in the sector that the pay parity scheme is causing more education and care centres to close.

In August, we fact checked claims by some ECE business lobbyists that the initiative was “directly contributing to the decline in service numbers”. We analysed data on openings and closures of services from 2022 to 2024 and found no evidence this was happening.

We also looked at what else was happening at the time such as the Covid pandemic (vaccination requirements for most businesses weren’t removed until 4/4/2022). We noted the rise in qualified teachers – in 2021, 65.5% of staff at these services were qualified teachers, compared to 67% in 2024. In 2025 more than 90% of eligible centres have opted-in to some form of pay parity.

Despite this, in a Cabinet paper from April, the Ministry of Education wrote to Seymour that “Sector representatives such as the Early Childhood Council have indicated that pay parity arrangements are creating funding shortfalls for centres, increasing rates of closure”.

Worried about how this myth was being perpetuated, the OECE wrote to Seymour and the Ministry to let them know about our findings.

This is a member/subscriber only post. To access it, please see the message below for details on access and joining.

Read More »

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