Fears early childhood teacher shortage will worsen as kindy teachers accept pay rises

The private early childhood sector is concerned pay rises for kindergarten teachers as part of their latest collective agreement will exacerbate the teacher shortage.

The New Zealand Educational Institute said there are 30,000 early childhood educators in New Zealand, of which kindergarten teachers make up 4310.

Kindy teachers will now get pay rises and a pay scale that’s the same as what was accepted by primary teachers earlier in the year, and a new maximum salary step of $90,000 for teachers with subject degrees from July 2021.

"It gives us recognition as kindergarten teachers that a teacher is a teacher regardless of the age of the child, so I'm pleased with that," kindergarten teacher Penelope Pokoati said.

Ms Pokoati said the increase in pay will help recruit and retain teachers for kindergartens, but said there are workload and wellbeing issues that have not been addressed with the collective agreement.

She said qualified early childhood teachers in other parts of the sector should get pay increases too.

"Many of the qualifications we hold are the same and all early childhood teachers should be rewarded and valued in that way," she said.

Maria Johnson, founder of Little School preschools, said qualified teachers are going to leave to earn more at kindergartens.

Ms Johnson said Government subsidies need to increase, otherwise increasing salaries for her staff will come at a cost.

"We will have to not have our qualified staff, pay for unqualified staff, pass the fees increases onto our parents and we're just going to lose quality and I don’t want to do that," she said.

"If we don’t get it right in ECE, then we missed valuable years in childrens’ learning."

Ms Johnson said the sector tries to have meetings with the Minister of Education but he shuts down the conversation.

"If ECE facilities didn’t exist in New Zealand, parents wouldn’t be able to work, that’s the reality."

Parents of children at St Heliers Little School spoken to by 1 NEWS said the disparity in pay between kindergarten teachers and other early childhood educators was not fair for staff or families.

"I feel like the families shouldn’t be penalised either because kindergartens simply don’t cater for working parents," parent Kelly Thomas said.

Early Childhood Council, which represents nearly 1200 early childhood centres, said a survey of members in April showed that it was taking around 100 days to fill teacher vacancies, according to chief executive Peter Reynolds.

Mr Reynolds wrote to Education Minister Chris Hipkins this week, sharing his concerns about the impact of the kindergarten teacher settlement on the wider sector and calling it "inherently unfair".

Mr Reynolds said the Government should increase subsidies for childcare centres to increase qualified teacher wages, and increase Government-set minimum salary rates.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins declined to be interviewed but said there is a "clear tightening" of teacher supply in the early learning sector.

This year’s Budget allocated $131 million over four years to increase subsidies for early childhood education by 1.8 per cent from January 2020, he said in a statement.

"This is on top of the 1.6 per cent increase that early learning services received from January 2019 costing $105 million over four years. These are significantly larger increases for ECE than was provided in budgets 2009 to 2017," he stated.

Mr Hipkins said proposals from sector members that have written to him are being looked into by the Ministry of Education, and officials will give him advice.