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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.
Education minister Erica Stanford is apparently concerned that children are starting school without being toilet trained.
The Press reported this week that Stanford spoke to primary school principals about the problem at a meeting in Southland in July.
It is “not safe, or hygienic or OK to be changing nappies at a school, which I know happens in some instances,” she is quoted in the story as saying.
The Office of Early Childhood Education agrees that it’s worrying that children are reportedly starting school lacking basic life skills.
However, in our view, policy changes recently introduced by the Government that Stanford represents will only exacerbate the issue.
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”.
Changes to ECE policy and regulations – from the winding back of pay parity to removing requirements for services to acknowledge tangata whenua and respect children’s cultural backgrounds in their teaching – are undermining children’s rights, an advocate says.
Cabinet has approved a potential law change that will affect how ECE services are governed.
The decision has paved the way for the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill to be heard in Parliament.
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 Early Childhood Education centres be updated, to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring.
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.
Parents and caregivers of tamariki in ECE made 80 complaints to the Ministry of Education through the confidential online service on the MyECE website last year.
MyECE is the official website of the ECE Parents’ Council. The council is a volunteer-run, grassroots organisation that
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.
Nearly 800 serious incidents in ECE Services in 2024
NEWS/ANALYSIS.
3 July 2025.
Alleged cases of child abuse or neglect, accidents, fraud and weather events were among 796 serious incidents early childhood education services reported to the Ministry of Education last year.
Health and safety issues were the most common type of incidents in ECE reported to the Ministry of Education
Traumatic incidents at ECEs receiving Ministry Traumatic Incident Team support
NEWS/ANALYSIS. 3 July 2025.
The Ministry of Education responded to 126 traumatic incidents in the last five and a half years.*
It has a Traumatic Incident Team to support ECEs following a traumatic event. The TI teams work alongside ECEs to help them put pro
Pay Parity Level Attestation for Permanently-Employed Teachers at Education & Care Centres and Hospital-Based Services DATA RELEASE. July 2, 2025. Below are the names of
Here’s the latest data and why more early childhood education centres than ever are agreeing to pay teachers at full ‘pay parity’ wage rates.
More early childhood education centres than ever before have agreed to pay teachers at the full pay parity salary rates, the latest attestation data released by the Ministry of Education shows.
Parents have been paying up to $137 per week ($6.52 per hour) for their 3- to 5-year-olds to attend ECE for 21 hours per week, analysis by the Office of Early Childhood Education shows.
That’s despite families supposedly being able to access 20 hours per week of ECE for free.
Yet, associate education minister David Seymour says the 20 hours policy is working well.
He made the comment when announcing a review last week into how the sector is funded.
ANALYSIS/OPINION – June 26, 2025.
The Government spent 13% more on funding early childhood education last year than in 2023, but three out of the top four not-for-profit provider groups got a smaller portion of the pie.
The two largest privately-operated provider groups – BestStart and Busy Bees – received slightly more funding (proportionately) year-on-year.
New Shoots Children’s Centres had the highest amount of funding per individual service in the group ($31.26M for 16 services, or just under $2M per service).
Whānau Manaaki (Wellington) Kindergarten Association, Auckland Kindergarten Association and Central Kids Kindergarten Trust (Waikato/Bay of Plenty) all got smaller proportions of funding than they did over the previous 12 months.
(See charts and tables below for more details.)
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