Anne Tolley Interview Analysis – Part III: Early Childhood Education

In this third and final part of analysing Anne Tolley’s interview we examine her responses on Early Childhood Education (ECE). I will put it out there here and now that I do not know a lot about this part of the education sector.

Espiner puts it to Tolley that she’s stripping hundreds of millions from the ECE sector. Once again she seems to do well in explaining how she’s shuffling money around to reflect the government’s priorities. Espiner asks “how can you reduce the quality” by only having 80 percent rather than 100 percent qualified teachers, and Tolley says it’s to do with the incentives. She doesn’t really explain why there wasn’t much of a difference, just flat out denies that it doesn’t.

Espiner says that the evidence shows that the proportion of qualified teachers, once again Tolley flat out denies this. There is not a lot being explained. In an earlier post I have mentioned how the previous target of 100 percent was inducing artificial credential inflation. The setting of this target didn’t do much more than forcing many ECE teachers who had had many years of experience to get themselves credentialled just to keep their own jobs.

Tolley could have made the case the New Zealand context is different from the research Espiner may have been referring to (he doesn’t cite any of them specificially) because it doesn’t have the history of having qualified ECE teachers like other countries. She does make the point of experience trumping credentials, putting it out there that many centres are parent run. They do not have credentialled staff but does that mean they are inferior in quality to anywhere else, she asks.

Espiner could have put a lot more pressure on the minister by say, blaming her for the unintended consequences from  shifting the goalposts in terms of the proportion of qualified teachers. People made decisions in retiring, or studying for credentials (taking on student loans!) or made business plans based on this target. People were expecting a demand for qualified teachers, but with a stroke of her pen, Tolley has reduced this demand by no longer offering the incentives put in place at the end of the previous government’s tenure. This did happen indirectly in the form of grilling her on possible fee increases, and Tolley was not very convincing in this regard.

The Looming ECE “Shortage”

The looming staff “shortage” for Early Childhood Education is the result of some impressive lobbying to those in government that the credential arms race be implemented in the ECE sector. With the stroke of a pen, the minister of education could scrap the requirement for teachers who parents have been satisfied with for many years to be forced to retrain merely to enable them to retain their jobs.

Retraining would be an equivalent full time commitment of one to three years with domestic tuition costing around $5000 per year. And then there’s the salary sacrifice. It is simply not viable, especially for those close to retirement or those who teach part time and have other commitments.

There has been talk of some “fast track” process for overseas trained “professionals” as an alternate pathway. The NZEI is of course saying a six week “hothouse” course would not be enough and should be at least a year. A short course like this would be a very effective shortcut for a year long graduate diploma or three year degree. The people lobbying for a “qualified” ECE sector wouldn’t want a shortcut to exist, as it would undermine the agenda of having a highly credentialled ECE sector.

Another reason people will lobby against such a shortcut is that foreigners who have some credentials will be better able to leap in, while locals are stuck having to retrain. A politically untenable situation in a global financial crisis and looming increases in unemployment.

There have been moves a foot to increase the status of teaching in the ECE, primary and secondary sectors. Teachers want more qualified candidates to enter the profession, want it to be as seen as prestigious. But if that were the case, it would be perceived to be as difficult to get into and have high academic cutoffs to apply like medicine or law. But they don’t. However, contrary to popular opinion, they just don’t let anyone into teachers’ college. I know from experience. I applied to two teachers’ colleges in New Zealand and was declined by one of them.