Imagine paying for a tradesperson who only did the job properly half the time. You would stop hiring them. Yet roughly half of New Zealand’s early childhood education centres fall below the quality bar set by the Education Review Office, and parents keep paying because they have no alternative. The childcare market is not a social policy footnote. It is labour market infrastructure, and it is broken.
The numbers behind the failure
The Organisation for Early Childhood Education reports that just 53% of ECE centres meet the ERO quality threshold. An ERO review of 235 providers found that 46% lack a responsive curriculum supporting children under three to develop as communicators and explorers. These are not marginal shortcomings. Communication and exploration are the foundational skills of early learning.
Auckland University research fellow Jean Rockel puts it bluntly: “The best early childhood care, it’s not just babysitting. It’s about more than keeping you safe. It’s a critical period of learning.”
Unqualified staff have nearly doubled in a decade
The quality problem traces directly to the workforce. Ministry of Education data shows 33,712 teaching staff across the ECE sector, but only 24,167 hold formal qualifications. That leaves more than 9,500 unqualified staff, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2011. This is not an ageing-out problem either. 82% of unqualified staff are under 50, meaning the qualification gap is concentrated among newer entrants.
Kathy Wolfe, CEO of Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand, warns of direct consequences: “There’s weaker oversight, inconsistent care and lack of development of children’s education.” NZEI President Louise Green is sharper still: “Untrained staff on minimum wage don’t understand child development or how to turn a simple interaction into a teaching moment.”
Qualified teachers are walking out too
The sector cannot retain the qualified teachers it does have. An NZEI workforce report found a third of ECE teachers frequently considered leaving in the past six months. There are currently 181 ECE vacancies nationally, including 110 for certified teachers. And 79% of ECE teachers say current teacher-child ratios do not meet health and safety standards.
The OECE’s 2025 sector confidence survey, drawn from approximately 1,000 participants, recorded confidence in government at an all-time low. The organisation has stated directly that the absence of a comprehensive early childhood workforce strategy is harming children’s educational outcomes.
The regulator called its own system substandard
The most damning verdict comes from inside government. The Ministry for Regulation’s 2024 review concluded: “The ECE regulatory system is not up to the standard of other regulatory systems in New Zealand or ECE regulations in comparable countries.”
The review identified four failures: outdated settings limiting supply, confusing requirements imposing undue compliance burdens, weak pressure on low-quality providers to improve above minimum standards, and insufficient incentive for high-quality providers to expand. This is not a story about needing more regulation. It is a story about the wrong regulation, where compliance costs fall on good operators while poor ones coast.
The 2025 enforcement list includes licence downgrades, suspensions, and closures. One provider was shut down while owing more than $1 million and holding five vehicles including a 2025 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Financial mismanagement running alongside quality failure.
Employers absorb the cost of broken childcare
When childcare is unreliable or substandard, parents cannot return to work, cannot maintain full-time hours, and cannot take on roles with travel or irregular schedules. Employers absorb this as vacancies, reduced productivity, and talent loss. This is disproportionately a problem for women re-entering the workforce, and it hits hardest in sectors already short of skilled staff.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has pushed back on the most alarming characterisations, noting that qualified teacher numbers have increased and the situation has not changed much in five years. That framing, stable rather than crisis, sits awkwardly alongside the Ministry for Regulation’s own finding that the system is substandard.
Stability is not a defence when the baseline is already failing. The government set a target of 98% enrolment in quality ECE by 2016. Nearly a decade later, half of centres do not meet the quality bar, the regulatory framework has been officially judged inadequate, and sector confidence is at a record low. Parents are paying premium fees for a market that delivers a coin-flip on quality. Employers are losing labour supply as a result. And every year the problem goes unaddressed, the workforce gap widens.
Sources
- OECE: Half of ECE services rated below the threshold for quality by ERO
- RNZ Checkpoint: ERO says nearly half of ECEs fall short
- NZ Herald: Unqualified early childhood teachers spark quality and safety concerns
- NZ Herald: Early childhood services fall short
- OECE: ECE Sector Confidence Survey 2025
- OECE: Lack of Early Childhood Workforce Strategy Hurts Children’s Education
- Ministry for Regulation: Regulatory Review of Early Childhood Education (PDF)
- OECE: ECE services that breached regulations in 2025