Vision

New Zealand’s early learning system enables every child to enjoy a good life, learn and thrive in high quality settings that support their identity, language and culture and are valued by parents and whānau.

Objectives

There are 5 objectives set out in the action plan.

1. Children and whānau experience environments which promote their wellbeing and support identity, language and culture.
2. All children are able to participate in early learning and have the support they need to learn and thrive.
3. Teaching staff and leaders are well qualified, diverse, culturally competent and valued.
4. Children develop capabilities that are valued by their whānau and community and support them to be competent and confident learners.
5. Early learning services are part of a planned and coherent education ecosystem that is supported, accountable and sustainable.

Each objective is broken down into achievable actions.

Proposals

The action plan’s proposals include:

• moving towards a fully qualified teacher workforce in teacher-led centres through incentives and regulation improving adult: child ratios ratios for babies and toddlers
• improving the consistency and levels of teacher salaries and conditions
• the development of a network management function for Government.

Implementing the plan

We work with the early learning sector, parents and whānau, hapū, iwi, communities and agencies to implement the actions in the plan.

Implementation is taking takes place in steps over the 10 years from 2019. The actions that we take are contingent on Cabinet agreement to individual actions and future budget processes.

A number of actions require changes to the regulatory framework that governs early learning services. The actions in the plan that require regulatory change should be understood as statements of intention. They may require public consultation as part of the regulatory change process.

Monitoring and evaluation

The Ministry and Education Review Office (ERO) work together to monitor and evaluate the impact of actions in the plan.

• We ensure we have baseline measures in place so we can measure change, and we define when and where interventions are needed.
• We consider investment in new measures where there are measurement gaps.
• We develop evaluation milestones.

Reporting on progress

We regularly report on progress against the action plan’s objectives by publishing reports on the high-level milestones of key actions and projects.

How the plan was developed

Download the action plan