2020 Budget: Big Salary Increase for Beginning Early Childhood Teachers

Newly trained early childhood teachers will receive salary increases of up to 9.6 percent in July as a first step to put all qualified teachers on the same salary scales.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced Thursday’s Budget will provide $ 151.1 million over four years to raise the minimum pay rate for qualified teachers in private and community care and education centers from July 1 to the same starting rate for kindergarten teachers: $ 49,862 a year.

“This increased funding is somehow going to level the playing field for early childhood centers looking to employ qualified teachers, but I do recognize that closing the gap between education and care services and kindergartens completely will be a challenge to be addressed in various Budgets, “he said.

The measure raises the minimum pay rates for non-kindergarten teachers by 6.5% for those with a bachelor’s degree plus an early childhood qualification, whose minimum wage is now $ 46,832, or 9.6% for those with only an early childhood degree or diploma whose current minimum is $ 45,491.

However, these are the only minimums that schools must pay to qualified teachers to obtain state funding.

In practice, a survey by the Early Childhood Council last year found that qualified teachers in care and education centers averaged between $ 25.41 per hour with less than five years of experience and $ 28.30 with at least 10 years of experience, which is equivalent to full-time salaries of between $ 52,853 and $ 58,864.

Although Hipkins said the increase in minimum fees “would improve the pay of up to 17,000 qualified teachers,” the immediate impact will only benefit beginning teachers, about 1,000 home students who complete early childhood training each year.

The New Zealand Educational Institute said last year that qualified teachers in education and care centers earned 23 percent less on average than teachers with the same grades in kindergarten.

That gap was expected to widen to 49 percent for some teachers after kindergarten teachers earned a salary increase of 18.5 percent for two years last year, keeping them in line with teachers at the school.

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Last year, the Government presented an Early Learning Plan that promised to develop “a mechanism that promotes more consistent and improved teacher salaries and conditions in the early learning sector.”

The Ministry of Education said its recommended approach to achieve this was a “fair payment agreement” across the sector.

But the government has yet to decide whether to enable such agreements, and Hipkins did not mention any new mechanisms.

Hipkins said education and care services would get a 2.3 percent increase in their subsidy rates beginning July 1 to cover the costs of the higher minimum payment rates.

All early learning services will also get a 1.6 percent ($ 123 million) increase in subsidy rates beginning next January to meet other cost pressures, giving education and care services a boost. 3.9 percent total.

The budget will also raise the “quality” funding rate for childcare at home by 5.4 percent ($ 36 million) starting in January. The quality fee is paid to services where all home educators have at least a Level 3 Early Childhood Education (ECE) qualification.

“Home-based services at the standard rate with educators completing ECE Level 4 will also earn an additional five hours of support for visiting teachers per week, and funding will provide tertiary rate assistance for up to 2,646 non-students they are eligible for free rates, “Hipkins said.

Playcentres will obtain a 7.6% ($ 3 million) increase in funding over four years, and the Ministry of Education will obtain an additional $ 8 million to monitor ECE standards.

In total, Hipkins said the additional $ 321 million for ECE over four years “supports the shift toward higher quality early learning that prioritizes the learning, well-being and identity of each child as set out in the Learning Action Plan Early”.

The amount represents a modest start to what was said last year as a plan to increase ECE spending by $ 5.5 billion over the next 10 years, implying a funding boost of around 30 percent a year. by 2029 in addition to the $ 2 billion a year that taxpayers now give it.

Funding for the two most important elements of the plan is not yet mentioned: restoring a higher funding rate for services with 100% qualified teachers and improving the staff / child ratio.

It is also unclear whether the Budget will now deliver on other promises of job education, such as creating a new educational support agency for schools within the Ministry of Education, and extending tertiary study free of charge from one year to two years.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson said new spending initiatives to meet the government’s five priorities, including improving child welfare, have been reevaluated due to the costs of keeping companies afloat during the Covid pandemic. -19.

“Unless they are meeting central cost pressure, we have frozen them,” he said.