Wellington Paranormal star Karen O'Leary is a former early childhood educator of 21 years. Photo / Supplied
Wellington Paranormal star Karen O'Leary is a former early childhood educator of 21 years. Photo / Supplied
Welcome to the Herald’s parenting podcast: One Day You’ll Thank Me. Join parents and hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.
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In the course of a child’s life, research shows it’s the early years that are the most crucial for developing positive outcomes when they reach adulthood.
Early development is so important, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern this week told the Herald it is the top policy on her list to fund if money wasn’t a factor.
“It is the most important part of our education system and yet in some ways for many, it is the most inaccessible.”
At the Labour Party conference, Ardern announced a new cost-of-living package which means over 50 per cent of New Zealand families are now eligible for subsidised childcare support.
And while it means more parents can get their little ones into early childhood education (ECE), the sector itself is struggling.
Earlier this year, the Office of Early Childhood Education survey returned findings from participant teachers who described ECE as “a train wreck”, “child farming” and a sector “heading backwards” where qualified teachers felt overworked and underpaid and centres were struggling to afford adequate staff.
These statements from frontline educators will be concerning for parents currently looking at childcare options in this country, where a 2020 survey found 60 per cent of Kiwi kids aged 0-4 were attending a licenced early learning service.
This week, our hosts spoke to former early childhood educator of 21 years, Karen O’Leary - who many will now enjoy watching on Wellington Paranormal and Celebrity Treasure Island – about the importance of ECE and what to look for in a good childcare provider.
O’Leary, who initially enrolled to study primary school teaching, says her view of ECE used to be that it wasn’t “real teaching.”
“My impression of it was, well, it’s not real education, is it? It’s just kind of like babysitting and looking after kids and just mucking about.”
But when the mother-of-one took on some relief work at an early childcare centre, her tune soon changed.
“The more time I spent there, the more I realised - this is actually where you need the best teachers. This is where children between the ages of zero and five are working out who they are as people; how to relate to others, how to form relationships. And if you think about the complexity of relationships, that’s immense… thinking about getting to know people and forming relationships, that’s hard stuff. A lot of adults can’t even do it,” says O’Leary, who moved to study ECE, got her degree and spent 21 years at Wellington’s Adelaide Early Childhood Centre.
O’Leary says a child’s experience in a ECE centre can be an “immensely powerful opportunity” to help shape their future.
O'Leary stars in Wellington Paranormal alongside Mike Minogue. Photo / Supplied
“Research has shown that even if, sadly, you are a child that comes from a family where you get shown no love, you never get spoken to in a positive way, the only words you ever hear are negative - which, I can’t even begin to imagine what that would be like, but it would be horrific - if that child manages to go to a high quality ECE centre, that can be the difference between them following the patterns of behaviour that exist in that family or that group, or making a positive change for the better and being able to break that cycle. So based on that, ECE is a huge, immensely powerful opportunity to help shape children’s lives.”
For parents looking at ECE options for their little ones, or considering a change for a child already enrolled in a centre, O’Leary says there’s one key thing to seek out above everything else.
“[...] You can have these centres that have got amazing buildings - they’ve got all the resources, they look clean and tidy, they look beautiful. You think, ‘Ah, this is so great’.”
“You don’t need to look at that, because children will be happy with a cardboard box and a piece of paper. What you need to look at is, who are the people here and what kind of people are they?”
When choosing a centre, O’Leary says the most crucial thing to do is “get to know the teachers.”
“Chat to them. And if they don’t want to chat to you or if they’re too busy to chat to you, that’s a red flag in my mind.
“If they can’t take five minutes and say, ‘Hello, what do you do?’, you know, so you get an idea of who they are as people, then I think that would be a red flag for me.
“And if they’re too busy to be able to talk to you, then there’s not enough teachers there.”
O’Leary recalls that at Adelaide, they provided more teachers than were required by Ministry of Education ratios.
“It meant that if parents came in and did just want to sit down for 10 minutes and have a cup of tea or a coffee and just chat, then we were available to do that, because those relationships between parents are just as important as the ones that [as an educator] you’re going to form with children. All three parties are involved.”
O’Leary acknowledges the state of the sector isn’t where it should be, but thinks parents should do their best to seek out good teachers.
“If you don’t have the right people - and the tricky thing with ECE is because we have been kind of left behind in terms of education, and the pay is rubbish - you’re not going to attract the best teachers. So, it’s a vicious cycle, really. There’s only so many ECE teachers in New Zealand, and some of them are not up to the mark. Some of them are, what I would say, terrible. It’s hard to get a full team of high-quality teachers. But that’s what you really want to look for, if you can find it.”
One Day You'll Thank Me is the NZ Herald's parenting podcast, with new episodes out on Sundays.
To learn more about what to look for in an ECE centre and get O’Leary’s views on diversity and the importance of teaching the right use of terms from an early age, listen to this week’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me below.
