2011 ECE Licensing and Certification Criteria Review

The Ministry of Education has recently reviewed the licensing and certification criteria related to the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008 for ECE services and playgroups.

The purpose of the review was to clarify the criteria to ensure they are as simple as possible to understand and to ensure compliance burdens are removed. 

The changes will provide clarification and help ECE service providers and playgroups to understand what is required of them in order to comply with the ECE regulations. Wording of the criteria has been amended to improve consistency across ECE service types.

There have been no changes made to the purpose or intent of the existing criteria.

Changes to the ECE licensing and certification criteria are summarised below. The changes are effective from 22 July 2011 and were published in the New Zealand Gazette on 21 July 2011.

Premises and Facilities

1. Criteria regarding the design and layout of premises have been changed to remove the exemption for existing services until 2020.
2. Reference to New Zealand Standards has been removed and explanatory text has been added.
3. The criterion on the number of toilets required has been amended to clarify the compliance requirement.
4. Kōhanga Reo criteria on storage, adult work spaces and outdoor activity space have been amended to align with the centre-based services’ criteria changes made in 2009.

Health and Safety

1. Reference to National or Regional Civil Defence guidelines has been removed and explanatory text has been added.
2. Reference to Department of Labour first aid training requirements has been removed and explanatory text has been added.
3. Reference to the Child, Youth and Family or New Zealand Police guidelines has been removed and explanatory text has been added.
4. For centre-based services, the wording of the first aid requirements criterion has been modified to take account of the increase in regulated maximum centre size to 150 children.
5. For home-based services, the first aid requirements criterion has been amended to ensure the quality of training is the same across all service types.
6. For hospital-based services, a change has been made to the punctuation in the criterion on the administering of medicine to children to remove ambiguity about who can give medicine to children and in what circumstances.

Governance, Management and Administration

1. The documentation required for a philosophy statement has been clarified.
2. For hospital-based services the human resource management criterion has been changed to align with the wording for centred-based services.
   

More information

The relevant licensing criteria have been updated in both the online and downloadable versions on this website. 

Errata Sheets

Errata sheets that correct existing printed criteria booklets to reflect these changes are available to download off the Centre based, Home-based, Hospital based, Ngā Kōhanga Reo and Playgroup criteria sections.  These documents detail the criteria that have been amended.

The New Zealand Gazette notification of changes to the ECE licensing and certification criteria is available of the NZ Gazette website.