An Unaffordable Scam

Early Childhood Education an Expensive Rort

"A fool and his money are soon parted," says the proverb. It seems that in our world, credulous people abound. And it's not hard to explain why. Successive generations have been raised and suckled on the idea that by waving a magic government wand suddenly, hey presto, money can appear out of nowhere into one's bank account. It's called socialism. No wonder, then, thousands of New Zealanders get sucked in by Nigerians promising millions via spam e-mails. Our naive electorate has been trained to believe such things for years.

New Zealand is a country ripe for being plucked by a scammer's guile. The electorate is easily manipulated. The people can be played for tuppence. We have been played over Early Childhood Eduction ("ECE") for example. Unfortunately, it is for considerably more than tuppence.

The recent Budget vastly increased taxpayer spending upon ECE, although not sufficiently to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the beast. Government funding for ECE centres has trebled over the past three years. In the most recent budget, funding increased again to $1.3bn. When Helen Clark, scammer extraordinaire, introduced the "20 free hours per week" policy several years ago, it cost $428m per year. Now it has risen to $1.3bn in a few short years. That's spending growth we can believe in.

What a complete waste of money! It is a rort of unbelievable proportions. Let's try to untangle the mess.

In the first place, we need to be reminded of how the ECE imbroglio was birthed. It has long been part of feminist ideology that mothers are oppressed and effectively held back in the drive for equality by being kept out of the work force through child raising responsibilities. True equality, it has been argued by the sisterhood, cannot be achieved without the State providing day-care centres so that mothers can return to the work force pronto. Clark and the sisterhood were keen to introduce "free" childhood education. Like fools, the New Zealand electorate--believing that money truly does grow on trees--were prepared to go along with it.

But the Labour Government was sufficiently clever and subtle to understand that more was needed than an naked invocation of feminist ideology if the electorate was to be thoroughly duped. It introduced two cloaking pieces of propaganda. The first was the proposition that raising educational standards was essential to our economic survival in the modern world. Clearly the state education system was failing in many ways, what with its notorious achievement of a 30% functional illiteracy rate amongst its graduates, and its average daily truancy rate of 10%. Children, in order to cope with the digital age, needed to get a much earlier start in education. The idea was that if you started them earlier in formal education, then, guess what--the kids would become functionally illiterate earlier than ever. No, no. They would be able to compete in the high skills, digital age. Yeah, right.

But the propaganda was successful. The credulous public believed our political Nigerian-scammers when they renamed state-funded day care "early childhood education". State funded day-care? Nah. Feminist rubbish. Early childhood education? Yes, much more acceptable.

The second propaganda piece was to insist that pre-school teaching was indeed an educational profession. To make the point, the Labour Government required that progressively more and more state-funded ECE educators be formally trained and receive academic qualifications which would make them professional educators of pre-school teaching in their own right. (The upshot, of course, is that thousands of really effective day-care staff were driven out of the industry.) To "prove" the point, salaries of ECE qualified teachers were to be linked to those of primary school teachers. And to make sure that government money was being "well-spent" the Education Review Office was assigned to audit ECE centres. "See--we are treating them just like regular schools" was the subtle propaganda piece. Once again, New Zealanders bought it hook-line-and-sinker. We know Nigerian scammers when we see them, and we love 'em.

So, New Zealand has created the most expensive, over engineered, gold-plated day-care centres conceivable. Of course this is no worry to socialists because it is always "other people's money" they are using.

Now, let's keep in mind a few realities. Firstly, New Zealand sends children off into government schools at five years old. In Australia and the US, it is six. So, not only does the state education system commence its educational wonder-working a year earlier, but now it has added to the ECE so that it can begin from the cradle. Our children deserve it, don't you know.

Secondly, the prevailing philosophy governing the institution which trains these new professional early childhood teachers is that formal teaching is verboten. Yes. You heard right. What children need in these super-dooper ECE centres is a pedagogy based upon discovery and play. Any attempt to introduce formal lessons in (say) alphabet, sounding letters and words, numbers is damaging and destructive. It is preventing the child from actualizing their potential. It is setting them up for a life of educational failure. It is damaging to their tender psyches.

In fact, if the Educational Review Office comes around to your local ECE and finds them actually trying to teach pre-school children anything that involves actual knowledge content, the review will be most negative and minatory indeed.

So, here is the biggest rort we have seen in this country in decades--which makes it prodigious, since we have had some doozies. State-funded day care centres needed to be made acceptable to the electorate by dressing ECE up as a government run educational reform. This has required vast ever-increasing amounts of tax payers money and a much hyped, over-engineered service, which is required--wait for it--not to educate. Only politicians, educational bureaucrats, and teacher unions could dream up such a rort--and only in New Zealand could they get away with it.

Well, you say, surely the National Government must be commended for reducing the increase in funding for this madness. Yes. Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic was always worthwhile--not.

We were grimly amused to read in the NZ Herald last week a profile of a working mother who complains that the redirection of government funding for ECE centres will probably mean that she will need to take her children out. Clearly this mum (and the Herald reporter) has not "got with the programme". The poor mum calls the ECE a creche. Say, what! The reporter laments that the mother is likely to be forced to take her children out of care, and leave the centre. She will likely face childcare fee increases. Quick. Rush out a few more press releases, pamphlets, and talking points. Doesn't this thick person know that her children are being educated at an Early Childhood Educational Centre. How stupid can people be? In fact, this mother sees all too clearly.

Here's an idea. Scrap the ECE gold-plated boondoggle. Go back to the original budget of $428m per year. Divide by the number of pre-school children in New Zealand. Offer a voucher for that amount to parents of pre-schoolers to be redeemed/spent at any childcare centre they choose. Remove all state funding for child-care centres, and scrap the whole ECE superstructure. Watch the number of child-care centres increase, and the costs of running them (and, therefore, their fees) reduce substantially. That's change we might be able to afford. Maybe.

But ECE--it's a socialist fools paradise. The government needs to get rid of it before it drowns us all.