Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Kathy Wolfe: Early Childhood NZ CEO on the Ministry of Regulation review on the sector

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Kathy Wolfe: Early Childhood NZ CEO on the Ministry of Regulation review on the sector · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It was a day of change announcements yesterday coming change
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: coming to the early Childhood center. If the claims about
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: compliance are accurate, they're not a moment too soon I
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: would have thought. So we've got a review. It's been
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: announced that will include education, health safety, child protection, food safety,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: buildings and workplaces. Funding will be reviewed separately.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: The chief executive of the Early Childhood New Zealand, Kathy Wolf,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is with us on this Kathy.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Morning, more than a Mike How are I very well?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And do thank you? Is this good or not?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: It's great, It's a big deal. If we do this well,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: it will make a huge difference for the early childhood sector.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Those compliance examples David Seymour was given yesterday, are they real?
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Yep? Definitely that every day in some of the early
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: living centers. And this is where you know there's that
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: balance between overregulated and underregulated.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Would most people who run childhood centers if I wandered
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: into them and say just generally speaking, are you overregulated
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: or underregulated? Most of them say over.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Potentially? Yeah. Mostly they didn't want to be saying then how.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Did we get here? Why are we regulated?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I think it's potentially the over zealousness of things. So
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: as soon as something goes wrong in an early told
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: the services like, well, let's just slap a rule around that,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: and it just kind of morphed into this enormous beast.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: You know, none of us saying we need to get
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: a point where children aren't safe and getting a quality education,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: but we are saying that we need to get teachers
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: back in front of children, focusing on their learning rather
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: than in an office drowning and administrative overload?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Is it one of those things that everyone agrees on?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Would the ministry agree and the people who fill out
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the paperworker, So everyone agrees there's a problem, absolutely.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and everybody's willing to work towards a safe space
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: where this is going to be identifying about what's working
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: and what's not.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just interesting that as yet another one of
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: these things that we all seem to agree something's not
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: quite right, but no one's ever done anything about Why
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: hasn't anyone done anything about it?
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I think it's been in a too heart basket. And
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: we're not necessarily saying that the policy or the regulation
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: statement and the tent is incorrect. It's more around the process,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: the procedures and the implementation thereof because a lot of
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: the time it's about the interpretation of what that rule
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: is saying. And you know, the early learning sector is
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: subject to many reviews. You know, you can get four
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: or five agencies coming through your doors, and the workload
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: of that is enormous. And you know, the one standalone
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: early learning service has the same compliance rules as a
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: much larger providers who have five to ten, you know,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: or even many more. They might have the economies of
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: scale to focus on those reviews, but if you're talking
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: about a standalone, small community that takes teachers away from educating.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Chalkren David Simols yesterday saying if we can clean up
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the paperwork and get this thing simplified, you can do
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: more and you can move faster. Is he right?
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: He's definitely has a point there, because it is about
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: making sure we can focus on forwarding a modern, leading
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: early learning sector. We do need to have teachers, center owners,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: employers focusing on world clast early learning education. There's absolutely
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: a room for compliance. We need to keep children safe
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: and look after their well being, but then we can
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: focus on quality education and not be drowned and pablic good.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: That's what we want. Kathy appreciated very much. Kathy Wolf,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: who's the chief executive of Childhood.
• 3:33
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• 3:39
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