Minister Announced Regulations Review at Little School in Khandallah Centre
NEWS/OPINION – June 13, 2025
The Wellington early childhood education centre from which David Seymour announced the ECE sector would be his new Ministry for Regulation’s first target had itself breached regulations 18 months earlier, the Office of Early Childhood Education has discovered. The Ministry of Education spent more than $35,000 supporting the service operator to address problems identified in the breaches, Ministry documents obtained by the OECE under the Official Information Act showed.
On June 5, 2024, Seymour posed for media photos with children at the Baroda Street Little School in Khandallah. That same morning he also held a press conference at the preschool, announcing a review into regulations governing the sector.
In a post on his Instagram page, alongside a photo of him reading tamariki a story, he wrote: “Parents want to know their child is safe and well cared for, but costs and waiting lists because of burdensome rules and regulations put ECE out of reach for many. So we’re going to review them.”
What he didn’t say was that in November 2022, the Ministry of Education had downgraded Baroda Street Little School (also known as Khandallah Little School 2), to a provisional licence for breaches of licensing criteria.
Four other centres with the same owner were also put on provisional licences between September 2022 and April 2023.
The Minister’s choice of where to announce the review of ECE regulations is telling, because he’s repeatedly expressed his opinion that regulations obstruct ECE business.
In September 2022, nearby Khandallah Little School and Khandallah Nursery School had also been put on provisional licenses for respectively breaching 23 and 20 licensing conditions.
Churton Park Little School & Nursery also had its license downgraded to provisional for non-compliance in November 2022.
Then, St Heliers Little School’s license was updated from full to provisional after the Ministry identified non-compliance in April 2023.
Maria Johnson owns the Little School group. She is a qualified teacher, a former chair of the owner’s lobby group the Early Childhood Council and also runs an ECE consultancy business.
Peter Reynolds, the immediate past chief executive of the ECC, also has a connection to Little Schools. In Ministry records, Reynolds is listed as a contact for: Khandallah Nursery School, Khandallah Little School 2, Khandallah Little School, and Churton Park Little School & Nursery.
The ECC has been a vocal critic of the amount of regulation in the sector.
According to Ministry of Education documents, Johnson, management and staff of the Wellington Little School centres (the three Khandallah services and Churton Park Little School) completed Strengthening Early Learning Opportunities (SELO) programmes so that the ECE services could regain their full licenses.
These programmes cost the Ministry a total of $35,340. The Ministry could not split the cost down by each of the four individual services.
An education consultant, Judith Price, ran the programmes.
In an email to the Ministry’s senior education advisor for ECE, Amy Pirie, on July 4, 2023, Price wrote that she was “starting to get real traction with Little Schools”.
In her final report on the Little Schools “cluster”, Price said: “This contract has ended on a high note… Some exciting mahi has happened; enjoyed the collaboration and on what we want to do rather than what we need to do”.
“We acknowledge the professionalism and dedication of the teams involved to engage in PL and attend PLD evening hui, zoom sessions, in centre and one on one dialogue to grow their teaching/professional practices.”
She told the Ministry, the professional development had focussed on:
- Delivering Te Whāriki whilst valuing the cultural knowledge each whānau and ākonga bring to their education.
- Governance and management.
- Building leadership capability.
- Building capability in te reo Māori and tikanga Māori practices and integrating this into curriculum delivery.
The Little Schools had turned its structured programme into a play-based curriculum, Price said.
A change in leadership structure at Little Schools part way through the SELO contract, and Johnson being overseas, had an impact on the progression of review and evaluation, the report noted: “Ongoing sickness and maintaining full staffing have been an ongoing dilemma, with new teachers coming in from overseas, without knowledge of Te Whāriki. This will make it challenging moving forward”.
All ECE services that are part of the Little School group have since regained their full licences. Khandallah Little School and Khandallah Nursery School did so on November 17, 2022. Khandallah Little School 2 and Churton Park Little School & Nursery followed suit on February 19, 2023, as did St Heliers Little School on February 20, 2024.
Along with the licensing records, the OECE asked the Ministry of Education for details of any complaints it had received about Khandallah Little School, Khandallah Little School 2 and Khandallah Nursery School since 2021.
The first of three complaints alleged that a child at Khandallah Nursery School was accidentally given breastmilk intended for another child. That was resolved in May 2021.
A separate allegation was made that Khandallah Little School withheld a child’s attendance records from a parent during an ongoing custody dispute being addressed in family court. That was resolved in May 2022.
A parent of children at Khandallah Little School 2 told the Ministry she had not received updates about her children’s learning and development and that injuries to them were not being recorded. She also alleged Khandallah Little School 2 used unpaid fees as a reason for terminating her children’s enrolment. That complaint was resolved in May 2023.
The OECE asked Little School group Maria Johnson and Seymour’s office detailed questions for this report. Neither of them responded to our request for comment.
