Early Childhood Education

The aim of early childhood education is to promote children's learning and development. The main providers of early childhood education are:

• Kindergartens, which mostly operate sessional early childhood education for children between the ages of three and five.
• Playcentres, which are collectively supervised and managed by parents for children aged up to five years.
  
• Education and Care Centres, which provide sessional, all-day, or flexible hour programmes for children from birth to school age.  They may be owned by private businesses, private trusts, public bodies or community trusts.
  
  Included are a small but increasing number of services that provide Māori Immersion Education and Pacific Island Education.
  

• Homebased Services, which is a network of homes under the supervision of a homebased coordinator.  The coordinator places children with caregivers in approved homes for an agreed number of hours per week.
• The Correspondence School, which is a distance education service mainly for children between three and five who are unable to attend, or have limited access to, an early childhood service because of isolation, illness or itinerancy.  Programmes are also available for children with special needs.
• Te Kōhanga Reo programmes, with a whanau development philosophy based on the total immersion of children from birth to school age in Māori language, culture, and values.
• A range of licence-exempt groups, which include:

Playgroups, which are community based groups of parents and children who meet for one to three sessions per week.

Pasifika Language Groups, whose main purpose is to provide programmes based on the values and languages of Pacific Island cultures. 
Special character centres such as Early Intervention Centres and Pacific Island Centres. These groups operate with a high level of parent participation.

Ngā Puna Kōhungahunga, which are groups set up in community based locations that are culturally appropriate for Māori.

Enrolment Trends

A total of 190,907 children were on the regular roll of an early childhood education service at 1 July 2007, an increase of 6.1 percent since 2003.

Of all year one students attending schools at 1 July 2007, 89.5 percent had previously participated in some form of early childhood education. In comparison, 94.4 percent of European/Pākehā year one students, 89.7 percent of Asian students, 83.9 percent of Māori students and 77.2 percent of Pasifika students attended some form of early childhood education (refer to table 17).

Different Types of Services

In 2007 there were 4,479 services providing early childhood education. Of these, 3,750 were licensed. There was an overall net decrease of 17 licensed and licence-exempt services from July 2006 to July 2007.

Education and care services had the highest proportion of enrolments at licensed services (54 percent) in 2007 followed by kindergartens (26 percent). Enrolments in education and care services have increased steadily over the last ten years.  In comparison the proportion of kindergarten enrolments have declined since 1998. This reflects the changing patterns of employment of parents who require services that offer all-day care rather than sessional programmes.

Figure 1 - Enrolments in Early Childhood Education Services 1997 - 2007

Ethnic Trends

Māori accounted for 18.7 percent of all enrolments in July 2007. Education and care services had the highest proportion of Māori enrolments (38.2 percent) in July 2007, followed closely by Te Kōhanga Reo (24.4 percent).

Enrolments for children identified as Pasifika were 6.1 percent of all enrolments. Education and Care services had the largest share of Pasifika enrolments with 52.5 percent of all Pasifika enrolments.

European enrolments made up 66 percent, Asian enrolments made up 6.2 percent and other ethnic groups comprised 3.1 percent of all enrolments.

Table 1 - Children on the Regular Rolls of ECE Services by Ethnic Group at July 2003 - 2007 

Staff at Early Childhood Services

In July 2007, 60 percent of teachers in licensed services (excluding Te Kōhanga Reo and Playcentres) had a Diploma of Teaching (ECE) or higher. A Diploma in Teaching (ECE) is the minimum qualification required for teacher registration.

The proportion of teachers at education and care services holding a Diploma in Teaching (ECE) or higher increased from 50.3 percent in July 2006 to 53.9 percent in July 2007.