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A petition is being launched today calling for the government to reverse budget cuts and commit to more funding for early childhood education.
The petition is being promoted by the NZEI as part of an Early Childhood Day of Action and Labour leader Phil Goff will attend the launch in Auckland.
The petition comes as a move to cut the early childhood
education budget by $285 million comes into effect today.
An estimated 2500 centres where more than 80% of the staff are
qualified will lose funding incentives. Many say they will have to
increase fees to parents or else reduce staff numbers.
From today, some parents will pay more for pre-school care as $70
million of annual government funding dries up.
Peter Reynolds from the Early Childhood Council (ECC) said tens of thousands of teachers and young children and their families will all be impacted.
And while Meg Moss from the New Zealand Educational Institute acknowledged the government's difficult financial position, she said to apply cuts to early childhood education was foolish and argued that the effects would be extremely far reaching.
"I think all centres will be affected even those who at the moment have the less than 80% qualified registered teachers, because those centres will have no incentive to get more qualified, registered teachers," she told TVNZ's News at 8.
"In the long term... all children getting early childhood education will be affected by lower quality," she added.
Moss also rejected the idea the petition was too little, too late.
"All early childhood teachers, parents and communities have been arguing against these cuts since they were announced and we can't accept that it's a done deal.
"We'll continue arguing against it until the current or subsequent governments see the folly of these funding cuts," she said.
Labour wades in
But Labour has announced it will undo the controversial decision if it wins the election.
"We'll do it as the funds become available but it will be a priority for us because that is an important investment not only in our childhood's future but in our future," Goff said.
Goff told TV ONE's Breakfast today that the "last area of education you really want to cut is early education".
"That's where the foundation is laid," he said. "If we miss out on giving those kids a good start that costs all the way through the education system and out into the workforce."
Labour's ECE spokesperson Sue Moroney said the fee increases have happened at the same time that families struggle with increased GST, Christmas bills and costly school uniform prices.
She said National's decision to cut funds and increase fees means some families will now face tough decisions about enrolling their children.
Excluding children from Early Childhood Education because their parents can't afford to pay increasing fees is simply unacceptable, Moroney said.
Just how much more the change will cost parents is unclear. An ECC survey of its members puts the increase at up to $40 a week per child while Labour said its research suggests the increase will be anything up to $80 a week.
Minister Anne Tolley said Labour's figure is not reasonable but has not said what the increase is likely to be. She said parents should not just accept cost increases.
"These centres have had eight months in which to look at their costings and to make changes. It shouldn't have to fall back on parents."
Tolley said the government's early childhood education (ECE) budget in the coming year will be $100 million above the original Budget 2010 allocation, bringing the total spend to $1.4 billion.
She said early childhood education funding must be in proportion to other education spending.
"We are now at the stage where the taxpayer is subsidising ECE centres at an average of $7600 per child per year compared to an average of $5528 for a primary school student, and $6733 for a student at secondary school."
Prime Minister John Key said he did not believe fees would immediately rise and "a lot of centres are totally unaffected".
Key said Labour would have to borrow to restore the funding, meaning New Zealand would almost certainly be downgraded by international credit rating agencies as a result.
"He's (Goff) just spending billions of dollars and writing cheques he can't afford to cash."
The NZ Childcare Association said cuts to ECE funding for services with higher numbers of qualified teachers were widely regarded as a backward move by parents and families.
Chief executive Nancy Bell said the decision had cost services between $20,000 and $50,000 per year and centres have had to make very difficult decisions about how they manage the drop in funding without compromising the quality of care and education they deliver.
She told Breakfast that some parents would be able to pay the extra fees but any increase was not an option for others.
"More affluent communities will be able to pay for higher numbers of qualified teachers, and less affluent communities not so," she said.
Bell said centres had no option but to bridge the gap caused by the funding cut.
She said there was an economic argument "that spending at the beginning reduces the money that you spend at the end".
"I'm not talking about the compulsory sector here," she said.
"I'm thinking about loss productivity and adults that grow up that
aren't well educated, that don't have good school outcomes."
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