Sarah’s View

Dr Sarah Alexander warns systemic failures in NZ’s early childhood education put children at risk, citing the Christchurch chemical burns incident and urging lessons be learned from it.

Getting a call that your baby or young child has been seriously injured — or worse, has died — is something no parent should ever expect from a licensed early childhood service. Yet it happens.

On Friday afternoon, 5 December 2025, at a Christchurch centre licensed for 88 children, a corrosive substance was poured down a playground slide. Several children suffered chemical burns, prompting a major emergency response. By Monday, the centre had reopened as usual.

Credit is due to the service operator for informing parents and accepting responsibility.

Mistakes can happen — many of us have, at some point, reached for the wrong product when cleaning or fixing something.

Since becoming associate education minister and taking over the ECE portfolio after the 2023 general election, David Seymour has met with ECE sector groups and representatives about 30 times (that equates to more than once a month, on average).

While on the surface that figure might make it seem like he’s engaging with the key stakeholders of the sector regularly, when you comb through his ministerial diaries more thoroughly you’ll see the same names pop up again and again.

SARAH’S VIEW – OPINION COLUMN. The recent discovery of asbestos in commercially produced coloured sand sold in Aotearoa and Australia should prompt more than immediate safety checks and recalls, it should spark a wider conversation about why early childhood services and schools are buying mass‑produced sensory products in the first place.

Brightly packaged items promise instant appeal, but when something as basic as sand can carry hidden hazards, the trade‑offs are stark.

When Oversight by the ECE Regulator Fails: What 2017’s ECE Breaches Reveal OPINION – 24 July 2018 By Dr Sarah Alexander. The names of early