2013 Survey of Income, Expenditure and Fees of Early Childhood Education Providers.
A new Ministry of Education report suggests that most services are earning more money than they spend.
While the costs of caring for children in early childhood services have been rising faster than the level of income received, most services are still making a surplus.
Other findings included:
- Teacher salaries made up around two-thirds of costs of teacher-led centres.
- Private services spent less on the care and education of children compared with community-based services. Since teacher/ staff wages are one of the largest costs for teacher-led services, private services are on spending less on teacher wages and salaries.
- Private services earnt more in fees and other income compared to community-based services.
The report is titled “2013 Survey of Income, Expenditure and Fees of Early Childhood Education Providers”. It is available on the Ministry’s education counts website.
The survey collected information on costs, income, assets and liabilities, fees and voluntary work.
Services were not required to provide their financial data for the survey. Those who did were 24% of all childcare centres, 82% of all kindergartens, 37% of all home-based ECE agencies, 51% of all Playcentres, and 97% of all Kohanga Reo.
The Ministry’s reason for running the survey was “to make sure we have quality information to advise Ministers about the pressures that services face”.
UPDATE: The cost drivers survey was last carried out in 2015 but the Ministry of Education have decided to not process and make the results available. It is discontinuing the survey as a publication series.
See also a 2 July 2015 story on “Profit-driven ECE is flourishing.”
