KEY POINTS:
Preschoolers could miss out on vital early childcare education through a critical shortage of trained teachers, members of the industry say.
Regulations brought in by the Government last May mean early childhood centres, creches, licensed kohanga reo and kindergartens are required by the end of the year to have at least 50 per cent of their staff as qualified teachers.
This has put pressure on the industry to fill positions that had been taken up by non-qualified employees - and smaller businesses are starting to feel the pinch as they struggle to fill the gaps.
Early Childhood Council chief executive Sue Thorne said the shortage was "pretty severe and getting worse".
There were a number of reasons behind the situation, including the shift in Government policies regarding the number of qualified teachers centres and creches needed to hire.
"That meant a lot of [unqualified] people who were in the sector had to retrain and many of them didn't.
"We also lost the avenue of being able to recruit people with playcentre qualifications."
Ms Thorne said there was also a combination of a growing child rate and services being required to care for children for longer hours as both parents increasingly worked fulltime.
She said the shortages were most acute in growing areas such as Auckland and in the rural regions where there was a high turnover of staff.
Ms Thorne said she was concerned about the teacher quality as centres were employing virtually all new graduates who were often being put automatically into a senior position.
She said the kindergarten sector would soon be in a similar situation with an "ageing population" dominating the staff positions.
"So we can expect a series of retirements coming up that are going to make further shortages."
Wellington early childcare teacher Julie Oliver said the Karori Baptist Community Centre, where she worked, would be closing because it could not find enough qualified staff.
The centre runs part-time, but Ms Oliver said she knew at least two full-time centres in Karori - a large suburb in Wellington - were closing because of a lack of qualified teachers.
Ms Oliver said parents were left in a bind with the centres closing.
"I do know a couple of the parents are trying to see if they can start something - I don't know how they're going to factor all the regulations into that," she said.
"Some of them have got places elsewhere, some of them have been on waiting lists the whole time so are pretty close. The other ones have to stay home and wait for kindy."
Waiting lists for childcare centres were extremely long and the Baptist Community centre had 40 waiting to get in.
Other centres and creches had up to 90 toddlers on their list, Ms Oliver said.
It was particularly difficult for children under 2 to be accepted into childcare centres because a higher teacher-child ratio was required, she said.
"The unfortunate thing is unless things change, the community creches are all probably going to head down the same road."
The head of Wellington's Early Childhood Education school, Sue Cherrington, said demand for qualified and registered early childhood teachers was strong because centres were trying to meet the requirement to have half of their staff qualified.
"So there certainly is competition for those graduates. And it is a very tight labour market."
In fact centres needed to hire more than 50 per cent qualified staff as there was a minimum of that amount "on the floor" looking after the children.
"And so if one of those staff is off the floor for lunch then they're having to be replaced by another qualified and registered teacher," she said.
Ministry of Education senior manager Karl Le Quesne said most centres were well placed to get the staffing levels up to meet the new regulations.
His advice to centres was: "Don't close down yet. Come and talk to the ministry."
- NZPA
