New rules coming into force on 29 June 2026 will make licence downgrades in early childhood education harder to apply.
The change is driven by a claim that the Ministry of Education relies too heavily on provisional and suspended licences to address non-compliance.
That claim formed the basis of the advice presented to, and accepted by, Cabinet, which was told that the current system penalises services too readily, even for minor breaches.
Yet a decade of data collected by the Office of Early Childhood Education shows no evidence that provisional licences have been used lightly or without clear justification. If anything, the opposite concern sometimes arises.
Recent cases in which the Ministry chose not to take licensing action at all include serious health and safety incidents such as:
– children were burned on a water slide due to the use of a corrosive substance and taken to hospital by ambulance
– a child was left alone and locked in the centre’s van for nearly an hour and was only taken out after a parent arriving at the centre heard screaming and saw movement in the van
– a man twice entered a centre’s playground unnoticed, abducting a child on his second attempt and intending to sexually assault her.
Such examples raise a legitimate question: has the regulatory response, at times, been too lenient rather than overly punitive.
To understand the basis for the Ministry for Regulation’s claim of over reliance on provisional licensing, we asked it to provide the evidence underpinning its conclusion.
The material supplied does not substantiate the claim.
