Kathy Wolfe: Early Childhood NZ CEO on the Ministry of Regulation review on the sector

The Early Childhood Sector is welcoming the Ministry of Regulation review. 

Regulation Minister David Seymour's saying affordability, access, and regulation will be tackled in the review. 

In six months, a report will be sent back with recommendations for Cabinet on rules that could be removed or changed.  

Early Childhood New Zealand Chief Executive Kathy Wolfe told Mike Hosking that the amount of regulation is a big problem in the sector. 

She says new rules were brought in to fix issues and it's morphed out of control. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was a day of change announcements yesterday coming change
coming to the early Childhood center. If the claims about
compliance are accurate, they're not a moment too soon I
would have thought. So we've got a review. It's been
announced that will include education, health safety, child protection, food safety,
buildings and workplaces. Funding will be reviewed separately.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
The chief executive of the Early Childhood New Zealand, Kathy Wolf,
is with us on this Kathy.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Morning, more than a Mike How are I very well?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
And do thank you? Is this good or not?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's great, It's a big deal. If we do this well,
it will make a huge difference for the early childhood sector.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Those compliance examples David Seymour was given yesterday, are they real?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yep? Definitely that every day in some of the early
living centers. And this is where you know there's that
balance between overregulated and underregulated.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Would most people who run childhood centers if I wandered
into them and say just generally speaking, are you overregulated
or underregulated? Most of them say over.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Potentially? Yeah. Mostly they didn't want to be saying then how.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Did we get here? Why are we regulated?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I think it's potentially the over zealousness of things. So
as soon as something goes wrong in an early told
the services like, well, let's just slap a rule around that,
and it just kind of morphed into this enormous beast.
You know, none of us saying we need to get
a point where children aren't safe and getting a quality education,

(01:22):
but we are saying that we need to get teachers
back in front of children, focusing on their learning rather
than in an office drowning and administrative overload?

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Is it one of those things that everyone agrees on?
Would the ministry agree and the people who fill out
the paperworker, So everyone agrees there's a problem, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, and everybody's willing to work towards a safe space
where this is going to be identifying about what's working
and what's not.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah. It's just interesting that as yet another one of
these things that we all seem to agree something's not
quite right, but no one's ever done anything about Why
hasn't anyone done anything about it?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I think it's been in a too heart basket. And
we're not necessarily saying that the policy or the regulation
statement and the tent is incorrect. It's more around the process,
the procedures and the implementation thereof because a lot of
the time it's about the interpretation of what that rule
is saying. And you know, the early learning sector is

(02:20):
subject to many reviews. You know, you can get four
or five agencies coming through your doors, and the workload
of that is enormous. And you know, the one standalone
early learning service has the same compliance rules as a
much larger providers who have five to ten, you know,

(02:41):
or even many more. They might have the economies of
scale to focus on those reviews, but if you're talking
about a standalone, small community that takes teachers away from educating.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Chalkren David Simols yesterday saying if we can clean up
the paperwork and get this thing simplified, you can do
more and you can move faster. Is he right?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
He's definitely has a point there, because it is about
making sure we can focus on forwarding a modern, leading
early learning sector. We do need to have teachers, center owners,
employers focusing on world clast early learning education. There's absolutely
a room for compliance. We need to keep children safe
and look after their well being, but then we can

(03:26):
focus on quality education and not be drowned and pablic good.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's what we want. Kathy appreciated very much. Kathy Wolf,
who's the chief executive of Childhood.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
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