Comment: Far too many children in Aotearoa continue to experience the effects of poverty, housing insecurity, health inequities, and social exclusion. These conditions undermine children’s opportunities from the earliest years of life and contribute to cycles of intergenerational disadvantage.
We know high-quality early childhood education (ECE) is one of the most powerful public policy tools available for interrupting cycles of inequality and improving outcomes for children, families, and communities. So why don’t we fully fund early childhood education as we do our schools?
The benefits of high-quality ECE provision extend far beyond individual families. When young children experience rich learning environments, responsive relationships, and a strong sense of belonging, communities benefit through better educational participation, enhanced social cohesion, and reduced long-term social costs.
Public investment in early childhood education is therefore also an investment in the wellbeing and future prosperity of the nation.
Yet ECE is treated much like a private product that families have to shop for, picking from whatever is available. While the government subsidises the sector to some extent, families can be left to pick up significant costs. And there’s no cap on what providers can charge, or accountability regarding the percentage of funding transferred into profits.
Some 65 percent of ECE centres are now privately owned, fuelling questions about the extent to which profits are being prioritised over high quality. Evidence from international research routinely finds that, on average, for-profit ECEs rate lower for quality than non-profits.
A New Zealand comparison of a kindergarten association and a publicly listed ECE company found differences in the proportion of revenue spent on staffing (91 percent v 62 percent) and in their Education Review Office ratings: 97 percent of kindergartens in the association were rated as performing well compared with 86 percent of the company’s ECE centres.
The urgent need for reform in how the sector is funded is heightened by growing concerns about inequitable access to quality early childhood education.
Children living in poverty are among those who stand to benefit most from participation in high-quality ECE. Yet these are often the same children whose access to quality services is constrained by cost, location, availability, or systemic disadvantage.
Research shows that merely attending an early childhood service is not enough; what children experience within these settings is critical. High-quality provision can strengthen children’s learning, resilience, cultural identity, confidence, and social participation. Poor-quality provision harms children’s wellbeing, carrying long-term individual and social costs.
Having children in ECE can also enable parents to return to paid work, when that’s right for their family. However, system barriers and unaffordable costs mean families with children under three could be missing out on an estimated $116 million a year in paid-work earnings, simply because they want to work, but childcare isn’t accessible or affordable.
Responding to these concerns demands urgent government commitment and action. Policy settings should prioritise universal access to affordable, high-quality, culturally sustaining services staffed by well-qualified teachers.
Strong teacher-child relationships, qualified teachers, appropriate ratios of teachers to children, adequate resources, small group sizes, and stimulating learning environments are essential conditions for quality. These are fundamental requirements if ECE is to contribute meaningfully to reducing poverty-related disadvantage and educational inequities.
There is also an urgent need to reconsider the consequences of policy settings that have facilitated the expansion of for-profit provision.
Community-based, not-for-profit services have historically played a vital role in providing accessible and locally responsive ECE. Instead of leaving these services to compete on commercial terms, strengthening them—through, for example, fully funding teacher salaries as we do for schools—would better serve children, families, and communities.
Government policy must also recognise that educational equity cannot be separated from cultural equity. Any strategy to reduce child poverty through early childhood education must honour te Tiriti o Waitangi and support Māori aspirations for language revitalisation, cultural continuity, and self-determination.
Kōhanga Reo and other indigenous-led initiatives, such as Pacific Language Nests, demonstrate the transformative potential of culturally sustaining approaches that strengthen children’s identities and home languages as foundations for educational success.
High-quality ECE is most effective when accompanied by policies that improve the material conditions of children’s lives. Efforts to reduce poverty require coordinated action across education, housing, health, welfare, and employment.
The policy imperative is clear. If Aotearoa New Zealand is serious about reducing child poverty, addressing educational inequity, and fulfilling its obligations to future generations, it must invest in early childhood care and education.
This article was originally published on Newsroom.
Jenny Ritchie is a professor of Education at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and an associate of the Child Poverty Action Group.