Pre-school education paramount—Minister

Press, 21 August 1984, Page 8

Pre-school education paramount—Minister

Early childhood education is the single most important area of educational investment, says the Minister of Education, Mr Marshall. This area of education had been neglected in many ways in the last few years, but the Labour Government intended to win greater recognition for those involved in early childhood education, he said in Christchurch last evening. Mr Marshall was giving the opening address to the Free Kindergarten Teachers’ Association’s annual conference, the first conference of a national teachers’ organisation that he has addressed as Minister of Education. “Young children are people, with equal status as people to children in primary, secondary or tertiary education. They are just as real, just as human, and matter just as much. “To the extent that this country has any extra money at all to spend on new developments, you can be sure that this area is now going to get a share of it,” he told those at the conference. Good-quality and well planned early childhood education services could make savings in later, more expensive, special educational or social reform programmes, he said. The Labour Government’s policies on early childhood education included giving all children an equal chance to participate, encouraging more parental support and improving the quality of early childhood education. Involving parents was not

a frill or optional extra but a fundamental part of the early childhood educator’s job. It became almost impossible to do so at later stages in education, said Mr Marshall The Government fully supported the aims of Te Kohanga Reo (language nest). It would encourage the availability of and access to Maori language in education, he said. The autonomy and independence of the 25 different services providing early childhood education would be respected because their differences made a choice available to parents. “On a five-year plan, we want to implement the new staffing scheme for kindergartens, which will improve your ability to deliver quality education,” said Mr Marshall. “We also want, when we are able to do it, to lengthen and improve the quality of training available to all early childhood educators.” These policies could not be achieved immediately. The Government had to move step by step in many areas because the coffers it inherited were “not exactly bulging with gold,” he said. However, people at every level of the education system agreed that more money should be put into early childhood because of its over-all importance to both the Government’s education and social objectives. Staffing improvement would be the Government’s first priority, although this was a five-year progamme. It had not yet been determined whether anything

could be done on staffing from February, 1985, because next year’s programmes were already decided and announced before the change of Government, he said. “Although the full amount of the cash required may be a little slower than we want in coming through, the change in the public status of early childhood education has already arrived.” Mr Marshall said it was meaningless to impose notions of hierarchy on different kinds of education. It was particularly meaningless to place at the bottom of the heap an area which had not the least but arguably the greatest potential to make tor improvements which had life-long effects. “This recognition has been painfully slow in coming to early childhood education,” Mr Marshall said. “It took an almost missionary zeal and I have to acknowledge as a man that it was the women of New Zealand, not the men, who had the wisdom and energy to take up that fight and never let go,” he said. Men for the most part seemed to have taken the attitude that these were only little children and too young still for anything that could be called real education. It had taken a long time to prove the folly of that view, said Mr Marshall. An American programme which followed children through from the 1960 s showed the children who had received pre-school edu-

cation which involved their Barents achieved better in leir subsequent schooling, he said. They also won through eventually to more and better employment, were less likely to be known to the police, and more likely to continue their education for the rest of their lives. “Equity is one of the first things we all need to remember. The children who have access to kindergartens are still the most advantaged.” Mr Marshall said that 42 per cent of New Zealand children aged three and nearly 15 per cent of those aged four did not receive any formal early childhood education. “They and their parents are still missing out” The quality of staff in early childhood education was as important as the numbers, he said. “We need to take every means available to recruit people with the drive, warmth and creativity which the occupation requires. “As I see it, early childhood educators are in fact the bottom line of the whole philosophy of the Government, which the economic summit, at a quite different level, dramatises.” Central to the total message was that after a long period of division and confrontation, what was needed was a friendlier, psychologically healthier, more cooperative and more effective New Zealand. That process started with the younger children and their parents, he said.