Changes to the funding rules for teacher pay support childcare centre finances
NEWS / ANALYSIS.
Sept 5, 2024.
The changes
From October 2024, a non-certificated unqualified staff member can routinely be counted every funding period as being qualified and certificated for 80 hours of funding on higher funding bands.
Centres will no longer be obligated under salary attestation rules to pay certificated teachers who are not on permanent contracts at least as the same pay rates as permanently employed teacher. The only legal obligation employers will have will be to pay at least the NZ minimum adult wage to qualified teaching staff who are not permanently employed (unless the centre is party to a collective employment contract with NZEI or the staff member’s individual employment agreement specifies a higher rate of pay).
Kindergarten Associations party to the KTCA (kindergarten collective agreement) will continue to pay their causal/ reliever teachers up to Step 6 on the KTCA pay parity scale for a teacher.
Teachers may be on non-permanent employment contacts when covering for another teacher who is on parental or other leave (e.g. sick leave).
How the funding rule changes affect what funding a centre gets?
Should a centre employ more teaching staff on casual contracts, it will not affect the amount of pay parity funding they are paid by the Ministry of Education. Government moves to lessen burden of reliever costs on ECE services | Beehive.govt.nz
Who supports these changes?
Radio NZ reports that employers with the Early Childhood Council and Te Rito Maioha teacher and employer members welcome the changes. But, NZEI Te Riu Roa said the decision was made without any consultation with teachers or their representatives.
The OECE does not support these changes in funding rules in the absence of safeguards to prevent the exploitation of qualification and certificated teachers, to ensure teacher-led ECE centres do not have high teacher turnover, and to ensure children are taught and cared for by experienced ECE trained teachers who are well-paid and valued. There needs to be an ECE teacher supply and workforce strategy.
The OECE believes that centres that don’t work toward casualisation of their teaching staff (and those that employ any highly experienced teachers as permanent staff) will be penalised through other centres having greater financial capability to compete against them.
Data on Casual / Reliever teacher staff and permanent staff
Sixteen percent of the qualified teacher workforce in centres are casual workers.
| Qualified teachers by employment status in teacher-led services, 2020-2023 | |||
| Year | Employment status | Percentage | Number of teachers |
| 2020 | Casual/ reliever | 16% | 3,395 |
| Permanent | 84% | 17,932 | |
| 2021 | Casual/ reliever | 18% | 4,018 |
| Permanent | 82% | 18,702 | |
| 2022 | Casual/ reliever | 17% | 3,744 |
| Permanent | 83% | 18,453 | |
| 2023 | Casual/ reliever | 16% | 3,658 |
| Permanent | 84% | 19,197 | |
| Source: ECE Census | |||
A question for Minister Stanford and Minister Seymour is “what safeguards will be put in place to prevent or mitigate against the risk of this percentage increasing as a result of the funding rule changes?”
How will the funding rule changes impact on children? What is quality?
Better outcomes for children are strongly related to staff training and experience, and low teacher turnover/ permanent long-standing staff.
Higher quality centres are those that have teachers who are well trained in child development and experienced in working with young children in ECE environments, and who are there every day for children for children to rely on and build relationships with (as well as good ratios and small group sizes).
Comments and feedback on changes to the funding rules
Watch video on TV1 news: Change allows early childhood relief teachers to be paid minimum wage (1news.co.nz)
Service provider: Due to the lack of teachers in the industry when a service needs to rely on agency relievers it costs a fortune. Teachers can go full relieving, and it counts towards parity but the work they do is subpar. Relievers struggle with having to do learning stories or more than just babysitting.
Teacher: I’m devastated by this announcement. I’ve tried getting a permanent role, but no one will take me in the town where I live, as my pay parity step and quals are too high. I can’t get a permanent job with (name of large private centre chain) even though I work for them over 25 hrs a week, week in and week out, and have done for 4 years, because they only employ new grads or others low on the pay scale.
Service provider: I would be very concerned that centres would then employ a high number of casual Kaiako, pay them what they want, and claim funding for full parity. I can attest to full parity, but what this announcement is saying (I think) is that it then doesn’t matter what I actually pay anyone, how can they check and monitor employment agreements etc, if they make the rules so grey?
Teacher: I am a qualified teacher who has been in this industry for 20 years. Last year I become a reliever. I was burnt out with the high demands of my permanent position with an ECE centre. If it wasn’t for relieving, I would have left ECE altogether. This news of dropping requirements for pay parity for teachers who are relief teachers is affecting me. I am not sure I could commit to a regular position but if I did my chances of getting a permanent job are low. There is a huge buy-out fee the agency require if I return to a permanent role. As this about is usually around $5000 and upwards, how am I supposed to find permanent work? As a pay step 10 teacher I have also become undesirable to centres to employ when they can hire a less experienced teacher for lower cost. In today’s world where we are struggling financially in this economic crisis how am I supposed to survive? Let alone the mental impact this has on me!
Centre owner-operator and ECE qualified teacher: Both these changes are simply going to allow those who are willing, to cuts costs further and therefore the quality care and education the children in those services receive will diminish even further. This is not a step in fixing a very broken sector, this is a step in breaking a very broken sector even more.
Professional development provider: I hate to say this but there are a lot of centres in Auckland already doing this -it’s appalling! We get so many complaints from qualified staff who are returning to the workforce after maternity leave being put on ridiculous pay rates as a relief/casual employee and exploiting those who need to maintain their teacher registration hours. They feel forced to have to take the lower pay rates. Centre owners are refusing agencies because of the high pay rates because they know they can exploit teachers who are in this predicament by dealing with teachers directly.
Teacher: Come October do we just drop to minimum wage? If that’s the case I will take my 25 plus years ECE experience and leave. I’m not working for minimum wage when I could go and work at Kmart for the living wage of $27 plus an hr.
For those thinking relieving is all glamour – think again. Our hours fluctuate and as a casual employee there is no guarantee of any work. We take all the work we can get. We have to prove ourselves in each centre to be invited back to work again. We don’t get Annual Leave or sick leave for the most part so we try to stay well and not take days off. We can get sent home early from a shift at short notice or a shift cancelled last minute. We don’t get the same access to professional development as permanent teachers or any of the perks like extra uniform etc unless we pay for them. We pay our own teacher registration and First Aid. In centres when you are not a regular worker you could spend most of an 8hr shift outside in the freezing cold or boiling heat as that’s the easiest place to put a reliever who is more casual so is not able to do centre routines.
There are genuine reasons why we want to stay relieving – many of us have spent many years doing the hard yards. Paying relievers less than permanent teachers will only make finding a reliever more difficult and we are needed, or no permanent teacher could ever take Annual leave, sick leave, ACC leave, maternity leave, stress leave. Imagine then how stressed our already permanent teachers, managers etc would be. A sad day if you ask me.
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