ECE services

Statistics on providers of ECE, including tables on the number and types of ECE services, and information on waiting times.

Last updated: December 2025

Early childhood education services

There are different kinds of ECE services offering education and care to children from birth to school age. These services can either be 'teacher-led', 'whānau-led', or 'parent-led'. All ECE services must be licenced or certified by the Ministry of Education.

Teacher-led services need to have at least 50% of required teaching staff who are qualified and certified as ECE teachers. Teacher-led services include kindergartens, education and care services, home-based education and care, and Te Kura (the Correspondence School).

'Whānau-led' or 'Parent-led' means that whānau, parents and caregivers are involved in educating and caring for their children. Te Kōhanga Reo are whānau-led services offering a Māori environment for tamariki and their whānau. Parent-led services includes Playcentres and Playgroups.

ECE census summary

The Early Childhood Education (ECE) census is administered every year and provides a snapshot of high level statistics for early learning in New Zealand. Data captured is for a one week period, typically the last week in June, and includes information about the services, enrolment/attendance numbers, teaching staff and the use of languages.

The following documents give an overview of key findings from the latest ECE census.


The tables below provide statistics on the number of ECE services, licensed places and waiting times. These include interactive pivot tables which allow you to create your own tables by any combination of variables available and time-series files which are pre-made tables which centre on key statistics.

Please note: use of the pivot table spreadsheets requires MS Excel version 2007 or later.

New services

Closed services

Number of services

Number of licensed ECE places

Waiting times

Occupancy and capacity rates

Occupancy rates are measured as the average of the number of children present or absent at a service on a given day, over the number of licensed places for the service for that day. Occupancy rates are averaged across all early learning services in a given category. Occupancy rates provide an indication of how full services in a given category. For example, if a service has 30 licensed places and 27 children attending on a given day, they have an occupancy rate of 90%.

Capacity rates are measured as the actual number of hours children attend a service in any given day, over the booking-based operating hours for that service times licensed places. Booking-based operating hours are calculated for each service daily by taking the start time of the earliest booking, and end time of the latest booking. Note, licensed hours have not been used to determine operating hours, as for some service types the licensed hours greatly extend past typical operating hours. Capacity rates are averaged across all services in a given category. Capacity rates provide an indication of both how full services are, and how many more hours children could potentially be attending in a given category. For Example, if a service has 30 licensed places with children booked for 6 hours a day, and 27 children attending for 5 hours a day, the capacity rate will be 75%.

Adult:child ratio

The adult-to-child ratio is calculated using data captured during the ECE Census week. This measurement compares the number of teaching staff with contact hours, to the number of children that were present during the busiest hour of a service. The adult-to-child ratio is calculated for each service, and then the average and median ratio is taken for each aggregation level i.e. service type. As an example, an average ratio of 3 means that there is an average of 3.0 children to every teacher.