Pay Parity For Early Learning Workers is Just the Start
in www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom Carmen Dalli Helen May Anne E Meade 2021 As the Government announces a pay equity deal for early childhood teachers, Professor Carmen Dalli, Emeritus Professor Helen May and Dr Anne E Meade call for the urgent implementation of the Government's early learning action plan. Heading into the 2021 Budget, it is timely to review the first year of the implementation of He Taonga te tamaiti early learning action plan 2019-2029. When launched in December 2019, the plan raised hopes that accumulated workforce inequities, underfunding and quality issues in the early childhood sector would be redressed through a suite of actions over a 10-year period. At the time, Education Minister Chris Hipkins promised that, following significant gains in previous years by other education sector groups, 2020 would be the “turn of early childhood”. However, the advent of Covid-19 made 2020 a challenging year for New Zealanders. For the early childhood world, it has mean