Ratio requirements are part of the licensing criteria and are regulated by the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008, issued under section 636 of the Education and Training Act 2020.
Section 636 of the Education and Training Act 2020 – New Zealand Legislation
The adult-to-child ratio
Early learning services must always have a certain number of adults for the number of children attending. This is called the adult-to-child ratio. The ratio varies depending on the age of the children in your care and the type of service you are.
The adult-to-child ratio must be kept at all times. This includes when you take children on an excursion or when adults stop working for lunch or other entitled breaks. To cover breaks, you may wish to employ additional staff, or bring in staff from non-contact time.
Schedule 2 of the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations sets out the adult-to-child ratios required for each age group and service type.
Who counts as adult when applying ratios
Schedule 2 identifies which adults can be counted when determining the adult-to-child ratios.
To count as an adult for each service, a person must be at least 17 years old and have responsibilities other than food preparation, serving, administration, or maintenance.
Schedule 2 of the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations – New Zealand Legislation
Ratio flexibility in mixed-age early learning services
Regulation 44A allows you to use spare capacity in your under-2s group by treating older children as under-2s for ratio purposes. You have spare capacity if you have fewer under-2s attending your service than you could have under the adult-to-child ratio. This could help you stay within the minimum ratio for your 2-and-over group and avoid the need for more staff.
For example, if your service has 9 children aged under 2, and 21 children aged 2 or older, you could count 1 of the older children in the under-2s group. Then you only need 2 staff members for the 2-and-over group and not the 3 staff members 21 children would usually need.
Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulation 44A – New Zealand Legislation
You can never have more children than the maximum stated on your Certificate of Licence.
If your service is for under-2s only
You may have a child who turns 2 but stays on temporarily at your service. In these cases, you should meet ratios for mixed age services and can apply Regulation 44A.
Funding impacts
If you include a child aged 2 or older in your under-2s ratio count, they are funded at the 2 years and older funding rate.
