Budget 2023: Government’s early childhood policy comes under even more fire from educators
The Government’s Budget centrepiece is still being slammed by the early childhood sector, with 90 percent of the industry now telling the Government its 20 hours free care for two-year-olds is unworkable.
At the centre of the Gender Pay Gap is the biological reality women carry the babies. If we as a liberal progressive society want to ensure everyone has equal agency, then surely recognising biological reality is a starting point?
The first 12months should be maternity leave – or paternity leave, either one, but one of the parents should be paid to stay home with the infant for its first year of life. Who else do you want to look after an infant other than the parent?
Meanwhile, ECE should be nationalised and made completely free for 2 year olds to 5 year olds while all after school care should be free.
Childcare costs fall unevenly and unfairly on women, so why not eliminate those costs altogether?
Playing the Gender Pay Gap Game even when implemented, doesn’t lead to the outcomes desired.
If women having babies is stunting their pay careers, then subside the cost of having that kid with 12months maternity/paternity leave, Nationalise ECE and free after school care.
Also implement a 4 day working week for all state employees so that people’s quality of life is lifted rather than just wage growth.
The promise of Democracy is you can look in your kids face and know they will have a netter deal of it than you.
Allowing a parent to stay home with their kid for a year, provide free early education care and free after school care would do more to live up to that promise than anything else.
We need to start fighting for tomorrow because none of the politicians are.
All we need to do to fund this type of universal upgrade of the social infrastructure is tax the rich!
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Well the State is doing such a great job of organization of the polytechnics why not let them stuff up the other end of the spectrum
That assumes that Polytechnics was producing enough carpenters, electricians and plumbers in the first place. What happened there oh great master of the armchiar economical greatness community?
Perfect
Privatised rest homes and trades training were also a disaster, when no such issues existed in the past. The whole lot should be folded back into the government departments, along with daycare nurseries, kindergarten-level crèches and after-school programmes.
Turning the technical colleges into one giant state enterprise is surely a preparation for privatisation, and so to the water board fiasco.
The age of two does not come under Early Childhood Education. You should do your research first.
Change it to baby care. Another complete arrogant point of view which changes early childhood employment terms with the keyboard banging.
It wouldn’t be a problem if the women with babies (can we even say that these days? LOL) had good working husbands to look after them.
Because that’s how society used to function before DPB.
@Andrew:— Of course this is a canard, because breadwinners were paying for every mother to be a homemaker at that time. Every mother was “being subsidised”, but nobody was complaining about that. The Arbitration Court set the minimum wage to the level required for two adults and three children “in a civilised community”, and the Award System ensured people soon earned more than that.
It is even more misleading when you consider the Full Employment Policy. The earliest children of the Windrush Generation went straight into daycare, because employment was so high that all the West Indian mothers were out working — well before most other homemakers were pushed into the workforce.
Andrew. No, the pre-DPB situation for single mothers, was horrendous and barbaric, and even women with ‘ good working husbands’ did not necessarily fare well at the hands, and many still do not.
But considering the dreadful capture of the Department of Education by the socially and psychologically destructive gender ID ideological cult, and the sexualisation of young school children, I think it would be madness to nationalise ECE and entrust it to this type of damaging government agency.
The Labour government does not like children, and this may have its genesis with Helen Clark, whose recorded negative attitude towards children and towards motherhood, was, IMO, ignorant, misguided, and pathological. The shocking abolition of the Commissioner for Children may be an inevitable result of Clark’s seeming antipathy to children who she seemed, IMO, to regard as vermin, and Clark herself was a bigger control freak than Rob Muldoon, IMO, and her influence within the party, considerable.
Unfortunately ECE is also very much a commercial enterprise nowadays, and apparently being bought into by one particular immigrant group with varying outcomes, so the answers are not clear. The ideal, of course, is a nurturing home environment with a parent caring for kiddies, and another parent bringing home the bacon. It can be done, and it can be a pleasurable experience, but alternatives still need to be available, and so do the economic circumstances to make home care a practical reality.
One thing is clear though, and that is that the low wage economy of neoliberalism only benefits the “haves” and this is what needs to be changed. It may take a biffing-out of both mainstream political parties to achieve the just and free society which we owe all its participants, and especially the vulnerable.
Agree best day care is with House Husband or Housewife. Kindy’s are over crowded he’ll holes. With some awful owner, who hates kids
trying to make money from babies.
Kindergarten is not over crowded as they must stick to ratio and they are not privately owned and all teachers are fully or provisionally qualified. However, many private owned who are not with fully or provisionally qualified ece teachers may just go for numbers and crap carers for profit.
Incorrect labelling with ignorance sorry.
Everything needs nationalising.
Tax the rich
What would you do with Playcentre?
Oh, that’s easy. Humpty Dumpty has the answer: a word means whatever I want it to mean.
I think a ‘netter’ deal is the new word for today. It means that on the whole things will be better even if there are some small annoying things that detract from the gains. Can we please have more netter deals gummint?
Do something positive for everyone, let’s not have racism, reverse racism etc. – just sexism now and then ie better situations for mothers or fathers to do their job and workshops to help them do that. Perhaps regular block courses for skills required in the workplace, with excellent kid-care alongside in an adjacent classroom or playpen. Talk about getting two flowers to grow from a withered plant! What a good idea I have had. Let’s do it – oh it;’s already been done? Well start again and keep on doing it – not just a wee pilot to go on someone’s CV as having run one successful new course. Longevity, not throw away courses like throw away clothes, shoes – people?
Grey Warbler. “ … excellent kid-care alongside…” Lane Walker Rudkin, then a high quality clothing manufacturer in Christchurch, established the first on site crèche for its working mothers, mainly machinists, back in the late 1950’s I think. Consequently they had no difficulty getting and keeping staff. Mothers had peace of mind knowing their babies and toddlers were nearby and they could check on them, breast feed, interact in their downtime. Lane Walker Rudkin was later bought out, became something else, and I gather that the crèche went. Today much of their product- type is crap made by slave labour in Asia and guaranteed not to last.
There’s no reason why eg government departments could not provide similar, including for the large number of public servants who pour into Wellington each day by train, and whose domestic routines are disrupted every time that the train services are, which is frequently. The biggest number of out-calls on workplace phone lines used to be made by parents checking on children and each other, but they probably text now.
Unfortunately, the well-being of children is not a priority for this government any more than having a healthy and stable society is, as evidenced by their disestablishing the Commissioner for Children and underfunding just about everything necessary to help the children of the poor.
Mothercraft used to be taught in girls’ schools, as part of homecraft or domestic science, but that all got tossed out, possibly for perpetuating gender stereotypes, and as usual, the children were the ones who missed out. With no Commissioner, and an effete Minister, the government cannot claim to care about children.
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