Teaching Council chief executive Lesley Hoskin said early learning services were required to ensure at least 50 percent of their staff were qualified teachers, but the review suggests one qualified teacher, with other staff allowed to have other qualifications. Photo: 123RF
Changing qualification requirements for early childhood teachers would have devastating effects on young children, the professional body for teachers says.
The Teaching Council said it was worried the government would remove current requirements for qualified teachers in early childhood centres as recommended by last year's regulatory review of early childhood education.
Regulation Minister David Seymour said in December he accepted all of the review's 15 recommendations, and early childhood groups had been expecting to see change proposals early this year.
Teaching Council chief executive Lesley Hoskin told RNZ she was speaking out to ensure the proposal did not go any further.
She said early learning services were required to ensure at least 50 percent of their staff were qualified teachers and most had 80 percent with some at 100, but the review suggested requiring only one qualified teacher with other staff allowed to have other, lesser qualifications.
Hoskin said that would be a big mistake.
"Honestly this would be devastating for our children entering into any next education in their entire life," she said.
"The evidence shows that teachers make the biggest impact to education outcomes for children... we don't just have teachers in there providing care and safety for children to be - in a sense - baby-sat.
"These are people who are deliberately causing learning to happen. Doing assessments to make sure these young children are developing, in a way appropriate for the age, but supported in their learning."
The regulation review said change was needed because some services, especially those in low-income and rural areas, struggled to find qualified teachers.
Hoskin said the answer to that problem was to attract more people to teaching.
"This ignores the value that a registered teacher brings to influence the educational purpose of ECE. Qualified ECE teachers are highly skilled professionals who hold a teaching qualification. They are far more than glorified baby-sitters."
Hoskin urged the Education Minister Erica Stanford to step in and protect the role of early childhood education.
"Without a strong focus on meeting young children's learning needs, these changes risk undermining educational outcomes at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. They could also create a two-tier system where only families that can afford higher costs receive better learning opportunities," Hoskin said.
Some early childhood providers and a group of early childhood academics had also spoken out against the possible change.
Erica Stanford told RNZ no decisions had been made and "none of those things" had come before cabinet yet.
However, she said her view was clear.
"It is absolutely essential that we have qualified teachers in the room if we want to get outcomes for children before they come to school," she said.
"We must make sure that early childhood education is just that - education and not a baby sitting service because if you want young people to be school-ready and hit the ground running they need to have good oral language skills, good numeracy skills and self-regulation and that requires qualified teachers in the classroom."
The office of regulation Minister David Seymour said he would be taking a paper to cabinet for consideration shortly and any changes would be dependent on cabinet decisions.
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