Executive Summary

The summary may be useful for early childhood education services who wish to compare their costs to other services, or to understand how the Ministry of Education interprets the data . It is a relatively technical report for services that want more detail about the process.

In June and July 2006 the Ministry of Education conducted the Survey of Operational Costs of Early Childhood providers. Surveys were sent to all licensed early childhood education services, to request information about expenditure on a range of categories over the most recent fiscal year for which they have audited annual accounts.

This report analyses some key aspects of the data collected, covering response rates, average cost per hour and the proportion of expenditure spent on major cost categories.

The overall response rate from services was 56%. A response rate of 25%, given suitable coverage of service types, would have been adequate to provide a reliable indication of costs¹.

This compares with the 2005 response rate of 48%. As in 2005, responses have good coverage for all service types, rates, centre ownership, regions, and levels of rurality.

The average cost by service type is shown in the table below. This shows that education & care services have the highest average cost followed by Te Kōhanga Reo, kindergarten, home-based ECE, and playcentre. For both all-day and sessional education & care services there is a clear pattern that the cost per enrolled hour increases with the percentage of registered teachers. The report also includes analysis of average costs between regions and for different ownership structures.

Footnotes

1. Based on HOI's Dec 04 report on survey and price index mechanisms.
2. Totals as at 1 July 2006.