Policy Directions in Early Childhood Education for Rural New Zealand: An Examination of the Role of Mobile Pre-School Units

Claire Davison, Ken Stevens

Good-quality early childhood education has long-term, positive outcomes for all New Zealanders. Successive reports have accepted this, but despite repeated recommendations, early childhood education in New Zealand has never been fully government funded.

Current government policy is to increase participation in and improve the quality of early childhood services. One way to do this is to encourage private providers, but they are more likely to locate their services in areas of high population density where there is an assured market, rather than in rural New Zealand. One of the outcomes of this policy has been a continued lack of early childhood educational services in rural parts of the country.

This paper looks at the development and operation of one of the services available in rural areas, the Mobile Pre-School Units (MPSUs). Despite proving effective, these could cease through lack of funding, a problem exacerbated by policies such as bulk funding. To meet the Government’s early childhood objectives MPSUs require targeted resources to enable more frequent, longer sessions.

The paper concludes that the continued provision of early childhood education in sparsely populated areas depends on government policy recognising its special needs through specific funding policies.