Early learning participation

This index page provides statistics on children's participation in early learning including tables on prior participation rates of children starting school, enrolments and average hours spent in early learning.

Overview of early learning participation Updated: March 2026

Overall, early childhood education (ECE) participation increased from 2024 to 2025, across the three early learning participation measurements the Ministry of Education publishes. Among the population of ECE-aged children (0-4 years old), 64% participated in ECE in 2025. Six-months prior to entering school, 96.8% of children participated in ECE. Among 3-year-olds, 77% attended for 10 hours or more and 41% attended for 20 hours or more. Among 4-year-olds, 83% attended ECE for at least 10 hours or more and 43% attended ECE for 20 hours or more.

The Early learning participation indicator report summarises the three measures of participation in early learning.

Participation intensity measure Updated: October 2025

Using administrative data drawn from the Early Learning Information (ELI) system and population projections from StatsNZ, we are able to calculate the percentage of children attending early childhood education for 10 or more hours a week on average at age 3 and at age 4.

Results for 2017 to 2025 are presented here.

Prior participation in early learning  Updated: May 2026

Data on prior ECE participation shows how many children have regularly attended early learning in the six months prior to starting school. From Q3 2024, this is collected through the Ministry of Education’s Early Learning Information (ELI) and ENROL systems.

This spreadsheet provides numbers and rates of prior participation from 2018 onwards, using ELI and ENROL. More information about this data can be found in the ‘Table Notes’ tab of this file.


If you’re interested in prior ECE participation data prior to 2018, please see the file below. Note: this data is generated from ENROL only, and as a result, the numbers and rates will vary from the current report.

ECE census summaryUpdated: December 2025

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.


Please note:

From 2000 to 2013, all ECE Census data was collected from paper-based RS61 returns. On these forms, enrolment data described regular enrolments in ECE licensed services regardless if children was absent during the return week. In 2014, the method for data collection changed and around 40% of services completed the Annual Census using the Ministry's new electronic collection tool for ECE: ELI.  In 2019, the proportion of licensed services using ELI rose to 90%. For these services, the data collected relates to attendances in ECE licensed services, not enrolments. Only Te Kōhanga Reo, casual and hospital-based services filed paper-based RS61 returns. This is a change to the definition of the data and means that the data should not be compared to previous years.

Pivot tables Updated: December 2025

This spreadsheet allows you to create your tables by any combination of variables. It includes the option of displaying number of children attending early learning by service type and regional type variables.

Pivot table with Total Response Ethnicity

Please note:  Total Response Ethnicity is where children are counted once in each ethnic group they identify with. E.g. If a child is identified as Māori and Asian then they’ll be counted in both the Māori and Asian participation count. Total Response is the preferred way to report ethnicity.

For more details about the Ministry’s ethnicity data, see here: Ethnic group codes

Pivot table with Prioritised Ethnicity

Please note:  Prioritised Ethnicity is where children that identify with more than one ethnicity are only counted in one ethnicity. They are prioritised in the order of Māori, Pasifika, Asian, other groups except European/Pākehā.

Time series data: Participation Updated: December 2025

This spreadsheet provides numbers of children participating in early learning across time in a simple, easy to use format.

Time series data: Hours of participation  Updated: December 2025

This spreadsheet provides information on average weekly attendance hours in early learning across time in a simple, easy to use format.

Early learning participation technical notes

Early Childhood Education (ECE) participation is associated with positive outcomes in the short and long term (Mitchell et al. 2008), especially for vulnerable children. Also, several studies have identified links between participation in ECE and better social and economic outcomes for children when they reach older ages (Mitchell et al. 2011); such as higher earning, reduced reliance in the welfare programme and reduction in crimes.

Children from vulnerable communities and low socio-economic backgrounds are especially benefited by early education, showing better social interactions and emotional maturity (Bakken et al. 2017) and greater learning ability. Studies show that engagement in ECE results in educational and vocational gain (Campbell et al. 2008) and reduces social inequalities in academic performance up to adulthood (Laurin et al. 2015).

In New Zealand, children who participate in ECE generally show well developed social and emotional skills before starting school (Thomas et al. 2019) and perform better in maths, reading, communication and logical problem solving during their primary school years (Wylie & Thompson, 2003) and adolescence (OECD 2016).

The measures

Indicator definition: Prior participation

Numerator:
The number of children who had regularly participated in early learning in the sixth months prior to starting school.
(Data source: Ministry of Education: Early Learning Information and ENROL Databases)

Denominator:
The number of children who had participated in early learning + the number who had not participated in early learning.
The number of students with unknown prior early learning attendance has been excluded (from both the numerator and denominator) when calculating participation rates.

The quarterly report is based on the number of children that started school in the rolling year ended quarter. For example, data for the year ended September 2024 relates to all children that started school between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024.

The Indicator report is based on the number of children who started school between 1 July and 30 June each year.
(Data source: Ministry of Education: Early Learning Information and ENROL Databases)

Indicator definition: Participation intensity

Numerator:
Numerator: Number of children who participated in ECE for 10 or more hours a week on average at age 3 and at age 4.
(Data source: Ministry of Education: Early Learning Information System)

Denominator:
The total number of children at age 3 and at age 4.

This measure is based on the number of children who attended ECE services between July 1 and June 30 each year. For example, ‘June 2019’ refers to those children who attended ECE between July 1 2018 and June 30 2019.

These measures are calculated from the day each individual child turns 3 for the age 3 measure, and from the day the child turns 4 for the age 4 measure. Attendance when a child is aged less than 3 and 5 or older are not included.
(Data sources: Stats NZ, National ethnic population projections)

Interpretation issues
Participation intensity is calculated using data from Early Learning Information System (ELI), which does not include participation from services that do not report their data via ELI such as ngā kōhanga reo. Thus participation of Māori children and other groups might be underrepresented.

For participation intensity, the population of 4 and 5 years old on June of each year is taken from Stats NZ, National ethnic population projections, by age and sex, 2018 (based)-2043 update,  50th percentile (median) scenario.

Caution should be taken when comparing the 2022 and 2023 PIM Regional Council and Territorial Authority results due to the change in underlying population projections, as these datasets are more susceptible to larger proportional changes, due to the smaller number of children. Changes between the 2022 and 2023 PIM datasets could be explained by changes in both the participation of children, and the change in base population.

Stats NZ does not provide a breakdown of the socioeconomic areas (SES) children live. To approximate the number of children from high, medium and low SES areas we have used the following percentages: 30% of the population of children live in high SES areas, 37% in medium SES areas, and the remaining
33% in low SES areas; based on demographic data from the Early Learning Information system (ELI).

As the numerator (ELI - attendance data) and the denominator (Stats NZ projections) are from two different sources, the sum of the proportions for each year do not add to 100%.

Total Response Ethnicity
Students who identify with more than one ethnic group have been counted in each group they identify with. The figure in the “Total” column will therefore generally be less than the sum of the students.