Alexander said the results were a “disappointment” because there was so much hope for improvement when the Labour Government was voted in - however, very little action had been taken.
But a Ministry of Education spokesman says it has been working hard to implement pay parity as well as attract and retain more teachers through funding increases and a number of new policies.
The 2023 Early Childhood Sector Confidence Survey found that only 4 per cent of the 1000 respondents expected to see improvements in the sector in the next year, while 74 per cent expected it to get worse and the rest expected it to remain the same.
The report shows pessimism had been increasing each year since 2018, when only 36 per cent believed conditions would worsen.
“This level of despondency has set in and it’s very hard now to see the light,” Alexander said.
One teacher commented: “Unless ratios are improved, funding is increased and support for children with additional needs (developmental/behavioural) is addressed, then [I] can’t see it getting better.”
When it came to the Government, 74 per cent of people believed they were taking the sector in the wrong direction, while 13 per cent said it was heading in the right one. Again, it was the worst outcome since 2018.
Three reasons for the lack of confidence stood out in comments made by participants: the Government “shrinking the quality of the early childhood workforce”; “promoting inequality between kindergartens and the rest of the sector”; and “making it harder to provide quality education and adequately support children”.
Respondents said there was a lack of new graduates qualified in early childhood education, while qualified teaching staff were leaving because of low pay or poor workplace conditions.
“We are working with lots of inexperienced and unqualified teachers just to fill the gap of ratio; teachers who are just able to supervise, but not support children’s learning progress at all,” one teacher said.
The report also pointed out a new problem may be emerging of well-qualified and experienced teachers being rejected for employment because they cost more in wages than unqualified and beginning teachers.
“Should this problem be allowed to develop, the quality of the ECE teaching workforce will erode further,” the report said.
Pay parity with kindergarten teachers was also a major issue that came up. Kindergarten teachers are state sector employees, and Kindergarten Association centres are given higher funding rates than other early childhood centres.
“The Government cannot deliver on pay parity until it moves to allow access for all education and care centres to the same funding rates that kindergartens get,” the report said.
The report also said the Government did nothing to encourage services to do more than the minimum, meaning it was becoming difficult to provide quality education and care.
“Quality has gone, teaching is rare, crowd control of children is our reality,” one teacher commented.
The final question asked about confidence in the Ministry of Education. Sixty-three per cent of respondents had no or little confidence in the ministry, while 32 per cent had a moderate amount. Only 5 per cent of respondents had a great deal or a lot of confidence.
Comments in the report all pointed towards there being too much policy and not enough support dealing with problems teachers faced every day.
“The pay parity scheme has been actioned abysmally by the ministry. Current ratios in ECE, particularly for babies and toddlers, are harmful. There is too much bureaucracy and paperwork, and not enough real support,” one comment said.
Ministry of Education policy leader Andy Jackson said the Government had provided funding to address pay parity in the past two Budgets to make progress on its commitments.
“The approach taken was to estimate the pay gap between teachers’ salaries between ECE and kindergartens and offer higher funding opt-in rates if they commit to paying their teachers more,” he said.
He said the Government had invested $587 million over the last three years to improve teacher salaries in education and care services and support the Government’s commitment to pay parity.
The Government had also introduced the Overseas Finder’s Fee and Relocation Grant, included qualified ECE teachers on the accredited employer work visa Green List, funded scholarships to encourage a more diverse population into ECE training, funded the teacher education refresh programme and launched a recruitment campaign.
But Alexander said the Government needed to provide the same funding kindergartens were getting to all early childhood education centres in order to solve the pay parity issue and “turn that negative feeling around”.
“There needs to be something in Budget 2023 to show the sector that the Government understands what state the sector is in,” she said.
