An early childhood education teacher says it’s “really demoralising” to go to work knowing she’s not being paid as much as if she were at a kindergarten.
Melissa Burgess, a qualified ECE teacher at the Adelaide Early Childhood Centre in Wellington, told TVNZ1’s Breakfast this morning the lack of pay parity made it hard for the sector to retain talent.
She said qualified ECE teachers could shift to doing similar work at a kindergarten and be paid more.
“It’s pretty demoralising to go to work … We go in every day trying to do the best job we can by those children and the families and we’re just not valued for the work that we do,” she said.
“Our level of status is just lower.”
ECE teachers are paid, on average, 24 per cent less than teachers in kindergartens and primary schools with the same qualifications.
“There’s kind of a lot of reasons why we’ve slipped so far behind. But, I think if you look at why kindergarten teachers have managed to hold onto parity with primary, a lot of the reason is because they’re under one collective agreement,” Ms Burgess said.
“They’re able to unite together with one united voice.”
She said the lack of pay parity meant teachers were leaving the job “in droves”.
“There’s only so far that the love for the job can take you.”
It comes ahead of today’s historic action which will see early childhood teachers, campaigning for pay equity, have paid union meetings.
The move will see some early childhood centres close for about two hours.
Ms Burgess said given how far behind in parity ECE teachers were, they didn’t expect full parity right away.
“But, we wanted to see some steps built into contracts that would show how we would reach pay parity - the goal was by 2022,” she said.
She said the Government needed to get on board to reduce the pay gap between kindergarten and ECE teachers.
Ms Burgess said despite Budget 2020 delivering a $278 million funding boost for ECE centres with 100 per cent qualified teachers, she said teachers couldn’t live on “empty promises”.
“We need to see real action. There’s nothing spelt about what action beyond what has happened is going to lead to that [pay parity with kindergarten teachers].”
The New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa members, covered by the Early Childhood Education Collective Agreement, and Barnardos collective agreement, work in more than 130 centres across the country.
The meetings will involve Collectively Kids, Barnardos and single, independent centres and will see early childhood education centres close for about two hours, NZEI said.
SHARE ME