At full capacity, Kilbirnie Early Learners centre has four teachers for 20 children.
But manager Helen Baxter said they are currently operating with half the number of teachers they need.
A job has remained vacant since July and a senior teacher is on leave until March, and may choose to retire during that time.
Only three people applied for the vacancy all of whom were either from overseas or had mostly overseas experience, Baxter said.
But she said they needed someone who was ready to go.
“A tiny centre like us does not have the capacity to support that person through into the New Zealand system.”
Her worst fear is the centre will have to close sometime next year because there are not enough staff and they can’t afford to keep paying for relief teachers.
“I think it would be tragic, there are other centres in Kilbirnie and Miramar, but one by one all the community and not-for-profit ones have closed for various reasons.”
Ministry of Education workforce leader Anna Welanyk said there was global pressure on the supply of teachers.
She said ECE teachers were on the immigration green list, overseas relocation grants of up to $10,000 were available, as well as financial support for employers to cover the cost of overseas recruitment.
“We have seen strong demand from sector employers for ECE teachers from overseas and an increasing level of enquiry from overseas ECE teachers committed to relocating to Aotearoa.
“Each ECE service makes their own staffing decisions based on local demand, services offered and their individual circumstances.”
Aro Valley preschool senior teacher Bridget Mickelson-Warmouth said one of their teachers was formally retiring at the end of the year.
But an advertisement placed in the Education Gazette resulted in no applications after three weeks, she said.
“There is a dire shortage of teachers ... I’m a believer that things will happen, but it does create stress.”
Mickelson-Warmouth said it was also difficult to get relief teachers at short notice.
Some children will start school next year and Mickelson-Warmouth has considered not replacing them to keep numbers down if they can’t get a new teacher, but this would affect the financial viability of the preschool.
Both Baxter and Mickelson-Warmouth said the move towards pay parity was not happening fast enough.
The two preschools are not-for-profit parent-run co-operatives.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins said one of the challenges with the sector was the many different business models, which the Government has no line of sight of.
He said the Government was focusing efforts on lifting wages to retain and attract teachers and was working hard with the sector to make sure that funding was passed on to teachers.
“We started from a place of serious deficit, however, after the National Party froze funding over several years and left the sector in a parlous state. That will take more time to fix but we are committed to it and expect to be able to do more to lift wages.
National’s early childhood education spokeswoman Penny Simmonds said the issue of pay parity has split the sector.
“Those who have opted into it tend to be the bigger centres and they are now attracting staff away from the smaller centres.
“We want to make sure that parents have got choices and some children are better suited to a smaller centre, so I think it is a real issue if we only have the very big more corporate centres that are managing to survive.”
