ECE services that keep breaching regulations – What 10 years of data tells us
ANALYSIS – October 16, 2025
Twenty one ECE services have had their licences downgraded for breaching regulations on four or more occasions in the last decade – and 33 services have spent more than a year on a provisional and/or suspended licence, an analysis by the Office of Early Childhood Education of nearly 10 years’ worth of data shows.
View the Yearly Lists and Breach Records
One service stands out on both lists: Playtopia Educare in Rotorua.
Playtopia Educare was on a provisional licence on four occasions, for a total of 905 days (nearly 2 ½ years) between 2019 and 2024.
According to the Ministry of Education’s Education Counts website, Playtopia Educare is licensed for 40 children, including 10 under the age of 2.
The business that runs the service also appears to operate a before and afterschool programme and school holiday programme for children aged 5 to 13 at the same location.
The Ministry of Education downgraded Playtopia Educare’s licence on April 15, 2019. It stayed on a provisional licence until July 27, 2020.
It held a full licence for more than a year after that, before being downgraded again on 29 November 2021.
Its full licence was restored on August 29, 2022, only to be revoked again on August 30, 2023. Between then and February 25, 2024, the service was on a full licence for less than three weeks.
The licensing criteria Playtopia Educare was found to have breached related to the curriculum, premises and facilities, children’s health and safety and management and administration. It was also pulled up for breaching qualification requirements for adults and not meeting the person responsible requirement.
In its 2025 Quality Evaluation Report, the Education Review Office assessed Playtopia Educare as being “below the threshold for quality” for three out of four criteria.
Other significant breaches of regulations
The now-closed Woodhouse Early Learning Centre topped the list for the most breaches of minimum standards. It was downgraded to a provisional licence three times and had its licence suspended twice before its licence was cancelled by the Ministry for non-compliance on August 1, 2022.
In 2014, a 4-year-old girl became seriously intoxicated after drinking alcohol-based hand sanitiser at Woodhouse Early Learning Centre. The Ministry said the cancellation of the centre’s licence eight years later was not related to this incident.
Of more than 1300 services that had breached licensing requirements, around 170 services had had their licences cancelled for non-compliance between 2016 and 2025.
The Ministry does not have a specific policy for how many times a service can be put on a provisional licence before its licence is cancelled.
The OECE contacted Playtopia for comment, but did not receive a response.
We used statistics for the 2016 to 2024 calendar years, and data from January to August 2025 for our analysis
