News & Opinion — ECE NZ

The Ministry of Education does not hold records of the early childhood centres on public land.

This means that there is no way of tracking which ECE centres could be at risk of eviction or closure if the school or council they are renting the land from decides not to renew their lease.

The problem was exposed recently when Longbeach Playcentre, near Ashburton, was informed by its landlord Longbeach School that from the end of the year it would not be able to continue operating in the building it has been based in for 20 years.

After news of the situation broke, the Office of Early Childhood Education asked the Ministry for the names of ECE services located on public land, including hospitals, tertiary institutes and public reserves, as well as schools.

Health and safety in ECE: What Worksafe and Ministry documents reveal about four serious harm incidents

ANALYSIS/OPINION – 5 September 2025

A child temporarily lost consciousness and was taken to hospital in an ambulance after choking while eating at an Auckland early childhood centre.

Details of the incident are being made public for th

Fewer than half of ECE centres that are eligible for the Government’s free lunch programme have been getting the kai in the early months of the programme, official reports indicate.

A child’s neck became wedged in a fence and their breathing was restricted after they fell off a bike while attending early childhood education.

The injury was one of 244 serious incidents that ECE services notified to national health and safety regulator.

More than half of the injuries involved trips, slips or falls, the Office of Early Childhood Education’s analysis of the data, which we obtained under the Official Information Act, found.

What is a notifiable injury or illness? From the WorkSafe Website: All injuries or illnesses that require (or would usually require) a person to be admitted to hospital for immediate treatment are notifiable. A notifiable incident is an unplanned or uncontrolled work-related incident that exposes the health and safety of workers or others to a serious risk arising from immediate or imminent exposure to such dangers as a gas leak or explosion. A notifiable event is any of the following work-related events: a death, a notifiable injury or illness or a notifiable incident.

Incidents included:
– A child being given food they were allergic to.
– A child eating laundry powder after following a staff member into the laundry room.
– A child sliding down a piece of play equipment with a plastic tube in their mouth, leading to the tube hitting the back of their throat “with force” as they hit the ground. 

A free kindergarten association plans to make all of its kindergartens open year-round from the beginning of 2026, the Office of Early Childhood Education understands.

Multiple sources have told the OECE that the association’s management team has informed teachers employed by the kindergarten association, one of the largest ECE service providers in New Zealand, of the proposal, but parents and families have not yet been told.  

The move to year-round care and education may prove popular with parents in paid employment.

No public announcements have been made yet, so the OECE has chosen not to name the kindergarten association at this stage.

The Office of Early Childhood Education has compared how our submission, and that of the ECC, compared with the Ministry for Regulation’s final conclusions related to the review of licensing criteria and certain regulations for the sector.

This includes:
> all licensing criteria
> teacher qualification
> pay parity salary attestation
> person responsible
> door handle height
> MoE complaints process and visits.

We found that the Ministry’s recommendations lined up with those of the ECC for 55 of the 98 criteria/regulations.

We’ve put together the below searchable table so that you can compare the recommendations each party made.

After RNZ revealed last Friday that the Government intends to axe the pay parity scheme for education and care teachers, in part to give providers “greater autonomy… to negotiate” with teachers about pay, the Office of Early Childhood Education has been fact checking claims by ECE business lobbyists that pay parity has caused more services to close.

In our view, there is no evidence of this, based on the available statistics.

In a Cabinet paper from April, which was publicly released on July 17, the Ministry of Education wrote to associate minister of education David Seymour that: “The options in this paper begin the process of proactively moving away from the opt-in pay parity system and providing greater autonomy to providers to negotiate with teachers on matters of pay. The wider funding review you are seeking Cabinet approval for provides the opportunity to complete this process”.

After 5-year-old Malachi Subecz was murdered by his caregiver in November 2021, a report into the circumstances surrounding the case recommended that the rules around child protection systems in ECE be updated, to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring.

Nearly four years after Malachi’s death, the Ministry of Education is finally moving forward with plans to tighten up requirements for ECE services in responding to concerns about child abuse or neglect.

However, in the Office of Early Childhood Education’s view, the proposed changes don’t go far enough.

We’ve analysed how the changes proposed by the Ministry compare to the recommendations made by Dame Karen Poutasi, and found that they come up short.

On average, ECE teachers or staff members are off work for three to four months after sustaining a work related injury, ACC data indicates.

Two weeks ago, the Office of Early Childhood Education revealed that annually ACC accepts around 10,000 claims per year for injuries to children and staff at early childhood services. In total, the claims cost between $8 million and $9 million per year.

We have now obtained more statistics.

Around 8% of qualified ECE workforce made up of migrants on Accredited Employer Work Visas

ANALYSIS. July 17, 2025.

New Zealand’s early childhood education sector has become so reliant on migrant labour that around 8% of the qualified workforce is in the country on a temporary work visa – that’s nearly twice as many migrant teachers wor

The Ministry of Education received 481 complaints about ECE services in 2024, but the content of the complaints has not been made public.

The Office of Early Childhood Education has been trying to obtain detailed information about complaints against ECE services from the Ministry of Education and encourage transparency in its response to complaints for many years.

This year, the Ministry finally agreed to provide broad data, which the OECE has analysed.

Comment on the value of complaints and the Ministry of Education’s management of complaints and transparency is provided.

Every year, ACC accepts around 10,000 claims for injuries that happen at early childhood education services, costing between $8 million and $9 million in total.

The Office of Early Childhood Education’s chief advisor Dr Sarah Alexander says she’d like to see mahi from authorities to reduce injuries occurring in ECE.

She says the statistics are evidence that the current health and safety requirements in ECE aren’t up to scratch.

She is worried that with the relaxing of health and safety requirements from the regulation overhaul to support service operators to have less compliance, child injury rates will continue to increase annually.