Raising public and political awareness of who the Government is (not) listening to in its ECE Reform Programme
IN THE MEDIA
November 28, 2025
This week, The Post published an Op-Ed concerning who is the Government listening to about the care of our youngest children? It was pleasing to see the response from Minister Seymour published by The Post two days later.
Unfortunately, everything Minister Seymour wrote to challenge the key points made by our Chief Advisor, Dr Sarah Alexander in her opinion piece, can in turn be challenged right back.
And ultimately, Minister Seymour did not address the main point which was that government is listening only to a small minority in the sector. Moreover, parents – who are arguably the most important stakeholder along with children, have been brushed off.
You can read Dr Alexander’s opinion piece here.
Read associate education Minister Seymour’s reply here.
Minister Seymour replied:
1. “As an electorate MP I’ve had countless parents raise the issue of affordability of ECE. Local services told me that red tape puts unnecessary costs on parents and services.”
He however misses that parents rely on regulations to safeguard their children’s care, protection, and education, which won’t come from slashing red-tape and softer enforcement with no improvement to regulations or more regular monitoring. Parents are concerned also about the lack of oversight on what service providers can charge, as well as the transparency of fee increases.
2. “I acknowledge the other thing the sector wanted was more funding. That’s why we had a review to minimise costly red tape.”
In making this statement, Seymour suggests that cutting red tape may be less about genuine cost savings and more about supporting providers who resist compliance — those unwilling to make the effort and who have lobbied to remove safeguards they see as burdensome.
Meanwhile, the actual costs could far outweigh any savings: the expense of the Ministry for Regulation undertaking the review, the budget allocated to the funding review itself, redundancies of Ministry of Education staff as ECE oversight shifts to the Education Review Office, the time and resources required for service providers to implement changes, the potential loss of public investment in the training of teachers, and the risks to child safety, health, and education from removing key regulatory safeguards.
3. “Families need access to affordable and quality early learning services”.
Yes affordable and quality ECE is important. But Seymour goes no further than acknowledging this and does not offer any guarantee or policy to ensure that cost savings from cutting red tape will flow through in full to paents. As a result of cutting “red tape” for service providers, parents are unlikely to be charged less since services set their own fees. Nor has he guaranteed that existing quality standards, such as staff qualifications, will be maintained or improved. Instead, he argues that quality will come from softer, more sympathetic enforcement of regulations and by reducing the number of rules service providers must follow. For good outcomes to occur from child participation in ECE, ECE must be genuinely high‑quality and provide far more than just “early learning.”
4. “The new laws first priority is child safety. It will ensure that regulators should only put costs on parents if they’re necessary to achieve that goal.”
Minister Seymour is incorrect that the regulator puts costs on families. It is services that charge parents fees. Seymour has missed out that under the reforms, risks to child safety will be weighed against cost – therefore this is not putting safety first.
The Ministry for Regulation has estimated that cutting red tape in ECE would save only between $48.83 and $120.05 over a 10-year period. Importantly, the Ministry’s analysis excluded qualitative impacts such as effects on children, parent confidence in using ECE, and broader social outcomes.
For individual service owners, the savings could be negligible. One Auckland centre owner commented that he expected no relief from the review of ECE regulations: “That regulatory stuff, I personally think is a waste of time. We’re inherently safe in what we do. There has to be some checks in place and they weren’t costing us anything. My annual regulatory budget was low. If I spent two or three thousand dollars a year, that would be it.”
The new laws contain no clear definition of “child safety.” As a result, safety could be interpreted narrowly as the appearance of physical protection, without considering factors such as age, developmental needs, or staffing levels. Mental wellbeing also appears excluded. For example, restrictive practices like requiring toddlers to ask permission to use the toilet would not be considered a safety (or health) issue.
Equally concerning, no child impact statement was undertaken for the Ministry for Regulation’s ECE reform proposals, nor for the new laws introduced in the Education (ECE Reform) Act. See video from a Parliamentary hearing on the ECE Reform Bill (link here).
5. “It means parents have the flexibility to re-enter the workforce and build for their children’s future. The author of the op-ed seems to think this is a bad thing.”
Contrary to Seymour’s claim, Sarah Alexander did not argue that parent participation in paid work is negative. She herself has had 5 children and worked – a fact that Minister Seymour may not be aware of. Rather, she highlighted that one of the most alarming aspects of the reforms is the redefinition of the purpose of operating and government funding of early childhood education— shifting the focus away from ECE as being important for children’s education, care and wellbeing in the most important years of human development, toward supporting parent labour market participation.
It is worth noting that the Minister is not proposing to redefine the purpose of schools as places for parents to drop off their children while they work.
6. “We are listening to sector. For example, people said they wanted the frequency of checks for sleeping children to stay the same, so they are.”
Yet Seymour’s Ministry for Regulation whom claims listened to the sector did not recommend that the frequency of sleep checks in education and care centres remain the same. Indeed he accepted the recommendation to change the frequency as seen in the draft licensing criteria document that the Ministry of Education prepared. Why the sudden reversal now? Perhaps the minister has been prompted to change his position because of the OECE’s work in uncovering the fact that sleep checks of even 10 minutes can be too long and 15 minutes as proposed would only increase risk for infant and young children. Perhaps the Minister is worried by the petition of the Parents’ Council and has down a turnabout on this licensing criterion as it is explicitly mentioned in the petition as a potentially harmful proposed change.
