Funding cuts hit teacher aide jobs

Minister of Education Anne Tolley. Photo / Christine Cornege

Fears that some early childhood education staff would lose their jobs as a result of funding cuts have become a reality.

Fourteen teacher aides from centres across the Wanganui region will be made redundant at Christmas as a direct result of the cuts to early childhood education funding.

The cuts, which come into effect early next year, will see the top two funding bands removed, effectively taking funds away from centres where more than 80 per cent of teachers are fully qualified.

When the cuts were announced in the May Budget, concerns were raised that centres would have to cut staff or increase fees in order to survive.

NZEI, the union that represents early childhood teachers and support staff, said this was the first lot of job losses it had heard of as a result of the funding cuts.

The redundancies are being made at 14 centres managed by the Wanganui Kindergartens Association which will lose $880,000 under the new funding scheme.

Lani Hill, head teacher at Durie Hill which is in the association, said the other measures, such as increasing fees, would also have to be considered to replace the lost funding.

Vice-president Judith Nowotarski said children attending the centres would be affected as a result because teachers would have to take on the administrative and set-up tasks previously done by the teacher aides, reducing the time they could spend with children.

Ms Nowotarski said the axing of positions showed the flaws in the Government's policy.

"Not only will these valuable staff lose their jobs in small communities such as Ohakune and Waiouru, they will also be a loss to the kindergarten services," she said.

Ms Nowotarski said that "New Zealand needed to spend more, not less, on early childhood education, to improve achievement levels.

"We should be aiming to spend the Unicef recommendation of 1 per cent of GDP, which is an increase of around 25 per cent of what we currently spend."

A survey of about 200 childcare centres found as many as 90 per cent were planning on increasing fees as a result of the funding cuts, some by up to $10 an hour.

Education Minister Anne Tolley's response to news of the redundancies was that "ECE [early childhood education] services are individual businesses, and make their own decisions".