“The children come last… I often feel more like a security officer than an educator” – Nearly half of ECE staff don’t have time to get to know the babies and children they care for
PRESS RELEASE – 19 October 2026
ECE teachers have described feeling more like security guards or factory workers than educators, as research from the Office of Early Childhood Education reveals that almost half of frontline staff say they don’t have enough time to form individual relationships with the children in their care.
The 2026 ECE Quality for Children and Workplace Survey polled 3,040 staff working at licenced ECE services across Aotearoa.
We asked the respondents who worked directly with children if they had time to get to know them well. 47% said no. In 2023, this figure was 30%. (The OECE conducts the survey every three years.)
“It’s alarming that the proportion of ECE staff who have only surface-level relationships with the children they’re teaching has shot up by 17 percentage points in just three years,” says the OECE’s chief advisor Dr Sarah Alexander.
“We want ECE to have a positive impact on children’s learning and wellbeing but it’s simply not possible when teachers don’t even have enough time to get to know children well. Children need to form strong attachments to their teachers to feel safe, seen, and progress well in their learning.“
Meanwhile, staff endorsement in the quality of ECE has declined to the lowest level seen since the OECE’s annual survey began in 2014.
More than a third of the respondents (35%) said they would not be happy to send their child to an ECE service of the same quality as the one that they worked at. In 2023, 26% of participants said the same thing.
One survey respondent told the OECE: “The children always seem to come last and often have to amuse themselves while we are doing other tasks we have been directed to do by management.”
Another commented: “I often feel more like a security officer than an educator. Much of my day is spent scanning the environment, anticipating risks, managing conflicts, and ensuring the safety of children, many of whom have high support needs and behavioural challenges.”
And a third said: “Crowded conditions and regular use of the under-the-roof’ ratio counting system makes it feel like factory conditions… I see so many experiences for children being run as nothing more than speedy photo opportunities.”
A quarter (26%) of respondents were concerned for children’s safety at their service.
Although ECE services are required to maintain minimum ratios (of 1:5 adults-to-children for under 2-year-olds and 1 adult for the first 6 and 1:10 for more than 6 aged 2 to 5-years in centres licensed all-day; or 1:15 2 to 5-year-olds in centres where children attend no more than 4 hours in a day) at all times, only 53% of participants said their service had never failed to meet minimum ratios.
Dr Alexander says concerns about inadequate staffing and adult-to-child ratios in centres were repeatedly raised in the survey comments.
“Currently, ratios are calculated across the centre. So one teacher can be supervising 9 babies and also doing a hazard check on an iPad while another teacher is in the bathroom changing nappies and they are still considered to be operating at a 1:5 ratio. Or a teacher can be on their own in a room or outside with over 20 children. We need urgent changes to the regulations around ratios from the current across the premises approach to a group size approach and require that staff can only be counted in ratio if they are actually actively supervising children.
“The findings indicate that recent Government ‘reforms’ to the sector have not led to a noticeable improvement in the quality of ECE that children experience. Instead, interactions between children and teachers have become more impersonal and more staff would not place their own child in a service of the same quality they worked at.”
View the full report: Early Childhood Education Quality for Children 2026
