Section two: Setting the course for success

Three goals, seven steps

The Strategic Plan for ECE contains an interconnecting framework of strategies, focused on achieving three core goals over the next 10 years:

• increasing participation in quality ECE services
• improving quality of ECE services
• promoting collaborative relationships.

The achievement of the plan's three goals requires major changes in the ECE sector. Some of the biggest shifts in direction will be:

• revised funding and regulatory systems to support diverse ECE services to achieve quality ECE
• better support of community-based ECE services, including licence-exempt groups
• the introduction of professional registration requirements for all teachers in teacher-led ECE services, such as those already applying in the schools sector and kindergartens. This includes coordinators in home-based care services
• better cooperation and collaboration between ECE services, parent support and development programmes and education, health and social services to empower parents and whänau to be involved holistically in their children's early learning
• greater involvement by the government in ECE, focusing particularly on communities where current participation in quality ECE is low.

The government has a range of approaches it can use to bring about the change in direction and actions this plan requires. The government can:

• fund
• regulate
• inform
• support.

A mix of these approaches will be used to achieve the plan's three goals. As an example, to increase the number of quality ECE teachers, the government will introduce regulations requiring providers of ECE services to employ registered teachers. By way of support, the government will provide information on how these requirements could be met and provide support to teacher education providers, ECE services and ECE teachers to help with the transition. Requiring ECE services to employ registered teachers increases the costs to the services. The government recognises that for ECE services to pass on too much of this cost to service users would decrease participation. The government will therefore fund services so that increased teacher quality does not come at the cost of decreased participation.

To ensure even progress is achieved across all three goals, a staged plan is needed. The strategic plan will be implemented in seven steps. The early steps lay the foundations from which other actions are to be launched. The steps, though, are not a timeline. Some strategies will take less time to complete than others, so in some instances, strategies planned in later steps may begin before all the strategies in previous steps are completed.

While this strategic plan provides a framework for government action over the next 10 years, its goals, strategies and actions are not exhaustive. Longitudinal research will measure the progress of implementation against the three goals as the plan unfolds and the effects on children, parents, families and whānau, and ECE services. This is likely to result in adjustment to the strategies during the 10-year life of the strategic plan.

A vision of ECE in the future

The Strategic Plan for ECE provides a policy framework, goals and strategies for early childhood education in New Zealand; essentially a road map for the development of this vital sector. But what will the success of the plan look like? What are the final destinations? As the development of ECE is not a journey in the physical sense, the final destinations are not defined in detail. However, we do have a vision for how the improvements set out in this plan might shape ECE in future. Throughout this plan you will find boxes that outline a vision of what might be achieved by 2012 as the result of specific strategies.