Preschool has always been the Cinderella of education, but with the Government considering a new strategic plan, that may be about to change, writes ESTELLE SARNEY.
Phoebe, aged 4, regularly smears herself with paint then sits naked in a baby bath on the deck washing it off, usually with another multi-coloured friend.
Daniel, also 4, has happily been practising how to write his name. He knows that when he's finished playing with blocks he must put them all back in their proper place ready for the next child.
Tessa, yes, 4, sits attentively on the mat as teacher Deena Mayor reads a story, then she jumps up for a game of musical statues.
All three children do this at early childhood centres, both learning and having fun, though the centres are quite different.
Phoebe attends the free-range, parent-run Playcentre, where children are encouraged to take the playdough into the sandpit, or paint the dolls' faces if the mood takes them - and parents clean up the mess.
Daniel attends the more structured teacher-run Montessori, at which a key philosophy is that children learn best in a calm, ordered atmosphere and they should have a role in maintaining that order.
Tessa attends public kindy, which mixes free play with rules and routine to prepare children for school.
A generation ago parents could choose only between kindergarten and Playcentre for preschool education. Today there are 11 types of providers, as well as programmes such as Parents as First Teachers.
Some cost money, including Montessori, Steiner, private kindergartens and daycare, which charge $15 to $20 a session or $30 to $60 a day. But others, such as Playcentre, public kindergartens, Kohanga Reo and Government-funded playgroups, ask for only a minimal, non-compulsory donation.
About 95 per cent of New Zealand 4-year-olds attend one of these centres - but as usual the 5 per cent who miss out altogether make the headlines, with primary school principals calling for compulsory preschool education for 4-year-olds.
Their reason? Forty per cent of Pacific Islanders and 30 per cent of Maori are turning up for some schools woefully ill-prepared. Some cannot talk properly and have the vocabularies of 2-year-olds because their families' failure to obtain outside preschool education for them has been compounded by neglect at home. Sometimes the nearest centre is too far for a family with no car, sometimes it's just the weather.
Victoria Carter, president of the Auckland Kindergarten Association and a city councillor, recalls a conversation she had recently with the head teacher of a South Auckland centre.
"She said the rolls had been down because we've had a wet winter, which means more of their children in poor households get sick, those who have to walk get wet, and that might be the only change of clothes they've got for the next three days. We'd love to have funding for a mini-van that could pick up those kids."
A bad start at school through a lack of early childhood education can damage a child's entire school career and working life. Amid the ideas at the Knowledge Wave conference last month Reserve Bank Governor Dr Don Brash pointed out that investment in the earliest years of a person's development was crucial in improving human capital: "I strongly suspect that improvements in preschool, primary and secondary education are even more important for our long-term growth and for the long-term cohesion of our society, than are improvements in tertiary education."
Certainly a growing body of research shows early childhood education is essential. It helps the young brain's language and learning development, producing higher achievement in literacy and maths during later schooling.
Children with preschool education are stronger in problem-solving, communication, individual responsibility and perseverance and, according to United States studies, may earn more and run less risk of winding up as criminals.
The benefits to parents involved in their children's early education should not be overlooked either. The topic dominates conversations between parents of preschoolers - where their kids go, what they do there, how good it is.
After four years at Playcentre and kindergarten I have built up a huge network of friends and contacts I would never have otherwise met. There is a camaraderie among us: we're all in this child-rearing thing together. Stuck out in the suburbs, the pre-school education community is important for morale and you learn a lot about children's development along the way.
Perhaps Brash was also spurred to speak out by a June OECD conference at which 12 member countries' early childhood systems revealed which strategies were consistently effective in getting children to school ready to learn.
They included: clear State responsibility for young children and their families; political will to fund services adequately, especially in needy communities; and a commitment to train and properly pay enough teachers.
At around the same time the Government announced a new funding scheme allocating $30 million over four years to about 1000 early childhood centres in poor areas. These centres include Kohanga Reo, Pacific Island centres and centres catering for high numbers of non-English-speaking children and children with special needs.
Carter hopes this includes some of Auckland's public kindies - 20 per cent of children attending them have English as a second language while 60 per cent of special needs children get no extra support because their difficulties are not considered bad enough.
Now parents and the public can have their say too, through the Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Education, which details the Government's 10-year target for the sector. Public submissions are open until September 21, the final report due on Education Minister Trevor Mallard's desk in October and his decisions about which recommendations to follow will be released early next year.
Importantly, the strategic plan echoes the OECD's strategy of increasing the Government's role in - and funding of - early childhood education, so improving access and participation for disadvantaged children. That means more money, buildings and pay parity for teachers to encourage quality people into the field and lower teacher-pupil ratios.
Other recommendations include: crown-owned facilities on school sites; making classrooms available for casual playgroups, kohanga and parenting programmes; and extra funding for start-up costs, such as equipment.
Interestingly, the sector seems to be coming full circle. In her recently released Politics in the Playground (Bridget Williams Books, $39.95) Professor Helen May of Victoria University recounts that before the Second World War, charitable kindergarten associations worked primarily with the inner-city poor.
"A few private kindergartens, staffed by kindergarten association-trained teachers, operated for the children of the middle classes ... The disorder and separations of war became a catalyst for new ideas such as early childhood education, and opinion swung to the view that governments should directly support preschool education and kindergarten, as a benefit both for children and for their mothers."
Today, more than 60 years later and after a decade of being subjected to market forces, kindergartens need that support more than ever.
In 1986, 67 per cent of children attended kindy. By 2000 this had dropped to 26 per cent as their peers flocked to private kindergartens and daycare centres.
O F COURSE this reflects social change too. Kindy hours simply do not meet the childcare demands of nine-to-five jobs (neither do those of Playcentre or Kohanga Reo, which also face declining rolls). But declining rolls are also a result of parents giving up on kindergarten because it takes too long to get their children in.
Many of Auckland's 105 public kindies, across all socio-economic areas, have waiting lists of 120 to 230. Kids are not getting into kindy until they are nearly 4, or even older. Private kindies, on the other hand, take children from the age of 2, meaning many spend two or three years there, paying $15 to $20 a session, before moving to their local public kindy when their name finally comes up.
This grates with Carter. "When the National government was paying private providers to establish by paying them similar funding to what it paid us, I had to wonder if they shouldn't have funded the public sector properly in the first place" she says.
"This latest strategic plan aims to improve access and participation, yet in Auckland we have this glaringly obvious situation where children are bursting to get into kindy but there is nowhere for them to go.
"When we do manage to open a new kindy, such as one we opened in Howick recently, we were getting enrolments at the rate of 30 a week as people left private kindies and daycares. That tells me that free kindy is the first choice, but parents don't want to have to wait until children are 4 to get into it."
Carter says the association estimates its funding from the Government to be $12.3 million this year, leaving, after teachers' salaries are taken out, just $600,000 to run head office and 105 kindies. Individual kindies raise funds to cover everything from phone bills to paint, but right now $3 million has to be found to bring various buildings into line with health and safety and Education Review Office regulations.
"When you have something of quality that is successful, ie, kindergarten, which has been a trusted education provider for over 100 years, it seems idiocy to make it so difficult for us," says Carter.
"We might have to shut down a kindy in, say, Otara because ERO has said we have to spend $60,000 on it, and to do so would bankrupt us.
"It shouldn't be my or the volunteers responsibility to make that impact on those children. It should be the Government's, and they should pay what ERO says needs to be spent to improve those environments."
While Ministry of Education senior policy manager Ross Boyd insists that early childhood education providers are expected to pay for property maintenance out of their bulk funding in the same way primary and secondary schools do, he concedes that the new strategic plan suggests the level of funding needs revising.
"It stops short of saying that the Government should supply everything free of charge and that early childhood education should be compulsory, but that doesn't mean the Government isn't taking seriously the need to invest more in the sector. Actions speak louder than words."
Indeed. Having a strategic plan is a good first step, but many are waiting to see whether the final report is followed by tangible help.
Carter points out Auckland needs five new kindies overnight to even dent the 8000-child waiting list
Why the shortfall? The Government does not provide kindergartens. Communities have to raise at least 10 per cent of the cost themselves before applying for a capital grant, which is now targeted at low socio-economic areas.
When asked why the Government provides primary and secondary schools, yet abdicates responsibility for early childhood centres, Ross Boyd had one simple answer: early childhood education is not compulsory.
And one has to ask, are public kindies with their short sessions two or three days a week still viable in this age of working mothers? Certainly they are most accessible to families, in terms of cost and location.
Playcentre and Kohanga Reo, which demand parent participation, are even more inaccessible to working families. Private kindies are expensive but convenient.
F INDING a centre that fits your budget and time requirements is one thing, ensuring the teaching and care of your precious children is up to standard is another. Part of that comes down to staff education and while within four years all staff at licensed centres and co-ordinators of home-based care networks will have to gain a diploma of teaching in early childhood education, right now standards are less demanding, meaning it is wise for parents to monitor those standards themselves.
The ratio of adults to children is also crucial, as this dictates how much one-on-one attention a child can receive and how varied and complex a centre's activities can be.
The parent-as-teacher philosophy of Playcentre and Kohanga Reo means a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio across all ages. But after two years' involvement at my local Playcentre, I quit frustrated that being there didn't necessarily mean I was being a good teacher - either for my children or the others.
Many parents attend with preschoolers of varying ages, which can mean being constantly torn in several directions. Attending the required training sessions at night falls short of a three-year full-time course in early childhood education.
Since putting my son, Jed, aged 4, into both a private and a public kindy, I've seen the difference that trained professionals running things can make, with time to plan and no distractions from their own children.
By charging parents $18 a session on top of its Government funding, Jed's private kindy can afford three teachers to 20 children.
At his public kindy in Mt Eden, which has only Government bulk funding to pay salaries, there are three teachers to 45 children. Head teacher, Deena Mayor, agrees this means much less opportunity for individual attention and small group work, where a lot of learning happens. She has noticed the difference after working in England for three years where the ratio was often 1:10.
Here, Mayor prefers to have parent helpers on hand before she brings out candles to make wax pictures, or knives to cut up vegetables for a soup-making session. It is unlikely she could run a programme like Jed's private kindy, Flying Start, ran recently. The children showed the teachers how to cross a road by doing it, then went back to a range of activities about pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and road rules.
As the Government's strategic plan states, children learn best when their emotional and physical security is ensured through warm, ongoing relationships. Group size and ratios affect those relationships. Large groups are associated with the imposition of rules, reduced language opportunities and less creative activities.
The plan recommends getting maximum ratios down from 1:15 to 1:13 and session maximums reduced from 45 to 40. Even this small reduction will mean recruiting more teacher trainees to a sector in which the top of the pay scale is 30 per cent less than that of primary teachers - $36,485 versus $52,076. Public kindy head teachers hit the salary ceiling at $42,716 (teachers at private centres can negotiate their own contracts).
The plan recommends pay parity in the public pay scale, but the Government has not yet decided whether to follow through its commitment to the last kindergarten teachers' pay round and set up a working party to look at the issue.
Instead it takes advantage of teachers such as Mayor, who regularly works 11-hour days, passing 90 children through her guiding hands, yet stays in the profession because of her passion and belief in what she does.
"I love being part of the children's learning process," says Mayor, "seeing their faces when they realise they've achieved something that was a challenge to them. And we as teachers learn something new every day - especially that you'll never know all there is to know.
"It's a continual, evolving learning process that we and the children do together.
* Read the Consultation Document for the Development of the Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Education, at the Ministry of Education website, Ministry of Education
To make submissions write to Working Party Convenor, Anne Meade, at PO Box 12-271, Wellington, or send an e-mail by September 21 to
anne.meade@attglobal.net
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